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Copyright^ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






STUDIES IN 

NATURE. LITERATURE, ART 
AND EXPERIENCE. 



BY 

F.., C HUBBARD., 

M 

Author of 

'Reading and Readers/* "Art and Pictures" "Pictures 
of the Middle Age," "A Study of Russian 
Literature," "Dutch Art and 
Artists" etc., etc. 




BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

New York: 835 Broadway. 

Baltimore: 1722 N. Calvert Street. 



JCiPCf 






Copyright, 1909, 

Broadway Publishing Co., 

835 Broadway, N. Y. 



©CLA2534!'7 



DEDICATION. 

[To Ruth 

The Heroine of the Book, 
The Hearth, and the Heart. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

These studies are practical, the product of 
genuine experience — they have been lived. 
They were written to help in some way the 
earnest student of to-day's real life. They were 
meant to inspire wide reading, careful observa- 
tion, thoughtful study and noble living. Na- 
ture is a kind and faithful teacher, she is full 
of life and reveals it, she bears the impress of 
her Creator and indexes it in a thousand ways, 
she has so much to give to the hungry minded 
and gives liberally. But she demands the rev- 
erent spirit and sympathetic heart; these con- 
ditions met and the gifts are greater than can 
be estimated. So is it true of Literature and 
Art and Life; they all alike await the sincere 
searcher and worker and reward him royally. 
Never were such opportunities and possibili- 
ties. Their appeal is personal and persistent. 
The best things are not yet found or done. The 
age is intense with emphasis. Everything 
means something, and that something involves 
our work and destiny. So have I thought out 
these studies with set purpose and may they 
give every reader somewhat of the pleasure 
experienced in their preparation. 

F. C. H. 
Brooklyn, N. Y., 

Nov. 2, 1909. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I — Our Library. . . I 

II — Our Garden . .. w , 17 

III — Out of Doors 37 

IV — Beauty . . 53 

V — Books and Literature 67 

VI— Fairy Night , 85 

VII— The Old Orchard 103 

VIII — Art and Pictures 121 

IX— Bird Life 135 

X — Silences of Nature and Life 153 

XI — Shrubs and Trees 167 

XII — Fiction in Literature 181 

XIII — Morning and Evening Light 197 

XIV— My Last Field Day 213 

XV — Poets as Interpreters of Nature. . . . 233 

XVI — A Mountain Experience 249 

XVII — From Our Observatory 265 

iXVIII— These October Days 281 

XIX— Soul Windows. . ,., w 299 



FOREWORD. 

Before I begin I must have a Foreword and 
herewith I shall take the reader into my confi- 
dence, and I am sure it will be a trust well re- 
posed. Our Home came to us through inheri- 
tance from one of the oldest families in town. 
I had rendered an important service in an 
emergent need, for which I was amply paid 
and never dreamed of further compensation; 
but extra gratitude prompted the gift, and 
there being no heirs, it was simply a case of 
transference. Royal people had lived here for 
about four generations, and it was known as 
the "Pelham mansion." The first Mr. Pel- 
ham to own the place was a literary man, 
writer and speaker of real merit, generally 
known throughout the state and popular as a 
political and social orator. There was no finer 
evening entertainment than his speeches. His 
son was a doctor of very wide practice and of 
state repute ; his grandson was also a physician, 
a most genial and delightful man, loved and 
courted by all who knew him, and he was the 
father of my friend the donor. The three 
preceding generations had made the mansion 

i 



11 FOREWORD 

famous, and under the last occupant it cer- 
tainly lost none of its prestige for hospitality, 
as well as a recognized literary and social cen- 
ter. 

The mansion has been modernized in some 
of its appointments, but as far as possible its 
form and individuality preserved. It is a 
venerable mansion, looks it and feels it, and yet 
has all the conveniences of the modern home. 
It arrests attention and is often photographed 
as a beautiful specimen of later colonial times. 
It was first occupied in 1790, is two storied, 
four square in form, having a central chimney 
from cellar to the apex roof, affording as such 
houses do fireplaces in each of the square 
rooms of both stories. What a household lux- 
ury is a fine looking and working fireplace, a 
boon in sickness, and when the wet and shivery 
east storms prevail, these fireplaces do light up 
a room and banish the weather and give extra 
sociability to company or invest one's reading 
and study with a more relishable zest! 

The front faqade bears a Grecian impress, 
with its five splendid, well-formed Corinthian 
pillars and a generous piazza,, giving it a most 
dignified aspect. The house sets well back 
from the street, on a gentle rise of ground, 
•fronting the east, and, like the imperturbable 



FOREWORD 111 

Egyptian Sphinx, hails most serenely the dawn- 
ing light of each new day. By a freak, or a 
well-digested plan — I never knew which — of 
the original architect, the mansion had "seven 
gables," and in our modernizing it six more 
were added; thirteen in all, a most interesting 
and bewitching number. Wiseacres and the 
superstitious shake their heads ominously and 
heave a sigh and look for calamities, but it all 
pleases us, for we are severely rid of them. 
Yet what stories they told while the repairs 
were going on — stories of signs in heaven and 
black cats on earth and moon tricks, laughable 
and pitiable, but the old house seems to enjoy 
it all because it arrests attention! 

The town of S., a shiretown, and on the old 
stage-coach line from Boston to New York and 
about midway, has grown into a large and 
vigorous city and grown away from us, at- 
tracted by the great Trunk line. The river, for 
so it has always been called, in early times had 
but a single factory; now it has a score of mam- 
moth mills and a greatly improved water power, 
while their aggregate demand and output of 
material make a most busy thoroughfare of 
the wide avenue in front, and noisy as well, if 
one has the leisure to note it. So, as good for- 
tune would have it, we are midway between the 



IV FOREWORD 

throbbing and crowded city and the whirl of 
factoryville, not near enough to either to sense 
their inconveniences. Ruth often quotes: 



"Not wholly in the busy world nor quite 
Beyond it, blooms the garden we love. 



>> 



Our plat of ground or "lot" as New Eng- 
enders call it, is 200x400 feet, marked out on 
a generous scale when land was cheaper, and 
successive owners have refused to lessen it, and 
hence kept intact. The house and land fit each 
other and never will we make the misfit. Trees 
and shrubbery and a compact cedar hedge push 
the street a good way off and somewhat hush 
the everlasting rush of trade and travel. 

Within these old home-walls, where books 
have grown into life and life has poured itself 
again into books or into people, apparently 
nothing more than memories may remain, but 
they unconsciously haunt every spot within and 
without. Imagination comes to the rescue and 
restores and invests former scenes until the 
very atmosphere seems instinct and tremulous 
with the great souls once dwelling here. Hard- 
ly a week passes but some one calls bearing in 
memory the olden days when hospitality was 
so generously dispensed, either upon them or 
some former loved one. So an old home is 



FOREWORD V 

more than a place or thing, it is a person and 
has a history, a memory, a heart ! These old 
rooms are still redolent with character-flavor, 
for here have met and mingled Presidents and 
Governors and Generals and Senators and au- 
thors — and their impress is here and it is such 
a legacy. This mansion has had a splendid his- 
tory, judging from its records. It had from 
its outset an old English habit of a daily diary 
of events and happenings and callers and ex- 
penses. What a charming bit of biography 
and history, a color of the life of those days, 
found dignified entry here, written in fine old 
style; and sometimes interpolated by another 
hand in after years, adding a truth or fact 
reminiscent, making the records more vivid, 
not always creditable, but more realistic. Those 
were the days of Whigs and Tories and tense 
politics, of English and French and American 
travellers, dancing and drinking bouts, horse 
racing and fox hunting and negro chasing ; cau- 
casing in the interests of State or Nation for 
Governor or President, physicians combining 
to oppose some "quack," ministers to silence 
some heretic or to patch up their theology, col- 
lege men on some scientific search, and so it 
runs on book after book. 

Among the earlier guests was John Quincy 



VI FOREWORD 

Adams, the "old man eloquent," tarrying a 
night or a meal on his way to New York or 
Washington. Daniel Webster was a frequent 
and welcome visitor ; Jenny Lind spent a couple 
of hours here, and to a select gathering sang 
her "Home, Sweet Home" as only she could 
sing it; here Ole Bull with his weird violin 
woke the softest echoes, and they linger yet; 
Louis Kossuth here met friends and received 
aid for his suffering Hungary; here came our 
own poets, Longfellow, and Whittier, and 
Bryant, and Holmes, and Poe, and oft wrote a 
verse; James Fennimore Cooper, the novelist; 
Washington Allston and Thomas Cole, artists; 
Henry Ward Beecher, America's greatest 
preacher, spent a Sabbath here one August and 
preached with great power; and so many other 
great men and women came and left their im- 
press. Those were rare occasions for the 
townsfolk, full of social delight and memorable 
as events. We need not detail more, but the 
records are in several volumes and full o! 
quaint marks and quotations and notes, and 
may be consulted at any time. 



OUR LIBRARY, 



Through Library Windows 

CHAPTER X. 

OUR LIBRARY. 

The library in our home is the living-room, 
a brain and heart center. We have made it 
of set purpose the cosiest room. Books, pic- 
tures, sunshine and delight add emphasis and 
give most agreeable life-tints, blending harmo- 
niously. The world of nature is out of doors 
yonder, we see it in miniature through our 
library windows and it is ever refreshing and 
inviting. But the world of thought and emo- 
tion, of human prowess in all its wide ranges 
is here within these four walls, packed into 
these living shelves. Here is history and travel, 
poetry and fiction ; we read it all and the pano- 
rama of history passes before us as a splendid 
pageant, the beauties of literature play the 
whole gamut of emotion, the glory of art mir- 
rors the ages, the grandeur and achievements 
of science electrify, the subtilties of philosophy 
stimulate and unfold the mental powers, reli- 

i 



2 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

gion opens doors and gives wider visions of the 
inspiring realities beyond. 

Our library is both ideal and real; it occupies 
the ground floor, the double parlor on the left 
as you enter, and looks out into the garden 
from three sides, east, south and west, and is 
full of light and cheer. Cicero said: "A library 
is the soul of the house"; it surely ornaments 
it, endows it, vitalizes it and peoples it. One's 
home ought not to be without its library any 
more than without its kitchen or dining-room. 
It is not elegance of room, nor multiplication 
of books, nor superb pictures, nor charming 
bric-a-brac, that makes a library. One book 
will do it, providing it is read and loved. But 
books are cheap and so the best books are 
within easy reach of the ordinary purse, or at 
least the public library is accessible to all. 
"Knowledge hunger" is the only vital condition 
of a home library and of a good education. 

That reading is most valuable that secures 
the richest results. We cannot all be great 
scholars, but we can be educated and know that 
knowledge is power. The busiest life has 
margins of time and opportunity, like the bor- 
ders of the old Missals, to enrich and exalt 
the common places written thereon. To read 
with purpose and judgment is the key to the 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 3 

mastery of books, and out of book-mastery is 
character building. Reading is mental travel- 
ling out over new lands, among new people, 
amid diversified changes full of interest and 
teaching, with companionable characters, hav- 
ing rare opportunities for observation. It is 
observation that impresses memory and stimu- 
lates reason and invigorates judgment and 
enriches understanding, and these work in us 
all that culture means. 

In our library all reading material has the 
right of way; desks and chairs are a necessity 
and fill a space, but the petted cases fairly 
groan, overburdened with ever-increasing vol- 
umes; yet they are so adjusted and related by 
taste and space as to give an air of ease and 
comfort. One can always do better work when 
in sympathy with one's environment. So many 
libraries have every convenience and yet are 
pulseless and irresponsive, they do not appeal 
to you in any kindly way, they do not inspire 
mental or spiritual longings. To work in them 
at your best would be quite an impossibility. 
You may not be able to tell just what the diffi- 
culty is, but you sense it ; it may be on the wrong 
side of the house, it may be the set way in 
which things are related, or, possibly, the paper 
or curtains or carpet or chairs or all combined. 



4 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

There is an irregularity about it all that puts 
you ill at ease. You care not for its volumes, 
rich and rare, nor its elegance, it is all cold and 
repulsive. 

Then there are other libraries so easy and 
cosy and delightful, you give a special look at 
every picture and bit of bric-a-brac, you long to 
take its books in hand and try its inviting chairs, 
and feel the stimulus of best literature under 
best conditions. A room is like a person, it 
needs the touch of taste and sympathy to make 
it restful and homelike, for like a person it has 
its individuality. Because we love books and 
pictures and they mean so much to us, our 
library is our living-room. 

There is magic in possession; but possession 
comes not from what is about us, but from 
what we have within. Relation is everything, 
but it must be vital. A man might hold legal 
titles to the world's best Madonnas, but if he 
did not have artistic taste he could never pos- 
sess them. The poorest one who looked on 
them to appreciate and prize would possess 
them more than he. This is how it is that 
some folks who reside in the biggest houses 
live in the smallest world, and some dwelling 
in the smallest houses live in the most glorious 
world. Plutarch has a parable of a man who 



THROUGH LIBRARY 5VINDOWS 5 

tried to make a dead body stand upright, but 
finished his task saying, "Deest aliqutd intus" 
— "there is something wanting inside." If we 
are rightly equipped we can go through the 
world owning very little of it, and yet saying 
in a royal spirit, "It is all mine." We can have 
nothing and yet possess all things. It is this 
mutual possession that carries with it increased 
possibilities; for nothing ever goes quite 
straight to its mark and hits it in our home 
without going through the hands of both of us. 
Ruth has her desk and I mine, but oft we get 
mixed and she finds me in her place absorbed 
with some book or writing. It matters not, 
for we are so one that all is hers and all is 
mine, and so out of it come harmony and 
delight. 

Some one, I know not who, has written on 
the "aristocratic library," and the thoughts are 
so generous I shall use some of them with 
modifications. I have been in many such and 
can speak from experience. It is too often a 
place of ornament and dignity of repose. Ele- 
gant book-cases, inclosed with glass doors, bric- 
a-brac and statuary surmounting for ornamen- 
tation, pictures at measured distances, easy 
chairs, Turkish carpets velvety to the tread, 
heavy curtains of blue or red or green and 



6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

gold barring the light, a center-table with costly 
books, not for use but exhibition — everything 
suggesting a quiet of refined order, and noth- 
ing even hinting hard work and its exquisite 
enjoyment. Such a library is not ours; ours is 
the living workshop, and the well-used tools 
are handy to the touch. Glass cases are non- 
conductors; a book-lover wants to know his 
books by touch and sight, so we have open 
shelving. Our books are not in elegant bind- 
ings to excite admiration, but "Puritans and 
Quakers all, valued for their souls, not their 
dresses." Light pours into ours freely from 
each window, curtains rarely check it, floor is 
hardwood and rugged in places. Yes, a couch, 
and I confess to its invitations and that I occa- 
sionally accept them and — ruminate! 

Pictures and books cover the wall spaces, 
which are choicer depends on the mood, for 
pictures are books and books are pictures; we 
enjoy both. There is a wholesome activity in 
our library by day, and alas ! too often by night 
and far into it, for we have a weakness, after 
company is gone and all are at rest, of talking 
with our friends on the shelves and listening 
with rapt attention to their tales and teachings. 
How mellow and fragrant and rich these mid- 
night readings ; fiction, poetry and art at night, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 7 

but by day the sterner and more difficult, for so 
the moods of day and night do differ. 

The besetting sins of this house are three, as 
I now recall them, more books and more pic- 
tures and more light. The first is chargeable 
to the writer, for if I go in town and rummage 
among books I am apt to come home with an 
extra one or more, partially hiding them as if 
a guilty spendthrift; Ruth has a picture weak- 
ness, and in some way manages to smuggle in 
her purchases and hiding them in such places 
that I shall first discover them and so surprise 
her by announcing the discovery, and of course 
say it is fine, and pave the way for an open 
confession and a balancing of outlays and anew 
resolving on economy. Our third sin is one 
that we both indulge in openly and heroically, 
more light. Eight windows in our library and 
there is rarely any sign of shade-drawing, ex- 
cept to accommodate some nervous visitor. 

After the tea is served and the twilight is 
gone, we turn blazingly high the gas flame, 
through the Welsbach incandescents. We 
fancy our threefold sin is easily condoned and 
we never worry over them, but always econo- 
mize in some other ways ! 

Sweeping days are "dies irae" in very deed. 
Ruth carefully superintends it and plans some 



8 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

very important errand for me out and away — » 
for what does a man know about sweeping and 
dusting? When all is done and order comes 
again so clean and neat, how much easier one 
can think and gather richer fruitage and write 
with a happier abandon. 

The books in our library mean more to us 
than they could to anybody else. There is an 
underlying purpose in nearly every volume. 
The great books of reference were fundamen- 
tally necessary and selected with care. That 
case yonder is wholly modern fiction, widely 
and wisely chosen; nature study claims those 
four shelves, that revolving case is full of art, 
that small case near the window is devoted to 
archaeology and kindred topics, these are the 
classics of our English literature with a sprin- 
kling of German and French, poetry fills those 
four lower shelves, those upper shelves repre- 
sent in part the books we first bought and from 
which we cannot part — and so on through all 
these cases. They are the product of need, of 
suggestion, or hunger or love. There is ever 
an extra value in one's own books; they are 
yours, you have handled them, read them and 
marked the margins, and because you read and 
loved them you know them. Dear old books ! 
how they appetize mind and heart, how handy 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 9 

to take and read and rekindle old fires, glowing 
with love and life! 

What a world of valuable material is stored 
away in this library, what memories cling to it 
all, what subtle laws of association are ever 
weaving one's life through the passing years 
into rich and varied textures in which the som- 
ber threads of care and work are delicately in- 
terwoven with the soft hues of love and 
the splendid dyes of imagination; feelings, 
thoughts, purposes and actions are no longer 
detached and isolated, rather are they blended 
into the fulness of life ever palpitating with 
keenest emotions and aspirations. One's toil 
or study gathers sweetness from the thought of 
those to whose comfort it ministers ; one's books 
are enriched by the consciousness of the im- 
measurable life that has flowed into them and 
will flow on through them; one's friends stand 
for genius and art and religion and noble 
achievement, and so our human life ceases to 
be a single strain and becomes a harmony of 
many chords each suggesting and deepening 
the melody of every other ! 

My library does not isolate me from the 
world of business and society and reform. The 
fact is, I am never so near the world of thought 
and emotion and toil and struggle as when in 



no THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

it, nor do I ever feel elsewhere the burden and 
mystery of life coming in upon me with such 
en awful and subduing power. There are 
times when these laden shelves seem to me like 
some vast organ upon whose banks of keys an 
unseen hand plays the full harmony of life. 
Then is my being thrilled and every sympa- 
thetic chord throbs with new interest for all hu- 
man need. It is this clear and definite percep- 
tion of the relation of things which turns a 
library into a place of inspiration and impulse, 
instead of a place of memory and repose. 

The library is a necessity, mind and spirit 
crave it as body craves food. Books feed and 
nourish and impart vigor and equip for en- 
deavor. Books are goads to thinking, not 
couches for dozing. Books are gateways 
through which come great minds laden with 
the wealth of thought. Books open up new 
fields for exploration and cultivation, disclose 
new mines rich in possibilities of pure gold, re- 
veal new methods of imparting and enriching; 
yes, one's library stands for knowledge, for 
culture and power. Here is history, biography, 
travel, science and politics, art, philosophy and 
religion, and in it all what a world of thought 
and emotion and life. Because of my library 
and its use the world has extra claims upon me. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS n 

Because of my culture I am specially indebted. 
Books have increased my life and beautified 
and enriched it, and others must share it or I 
lose its very quintessence of pleasure and 
power. Books have widened my horizon and 
heightened my zenith and I must lend a hand to 
Others that they may see and enter this larger 
and better world. I am a debtor to my fellows 
in proportion to my enlargement and enrich- 
ment. 

This easy flowing poem of Frank Dempster 
[Williams may fitly supplement our chapter: 

Give me the room whose every nook 
Is dedicated to a book, 
Two windows will suffice for air 
And grant the light admission there; 
One looking to the south, and one 
To speed the red, departing sun. 
The eastern wall from frieze to plinth 
Shall be the Poet's labyrinth, 
Where one may find the lords of rhyme 
From Homer's down to Dobson's time; 
And at the northern side a space 
Shall show an open chimney-place, 
Set round with ancient tiles that tell 
Some legend old and weave a spell 
About the fire dog-guarded seat, 



12 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

Where one may dream and taste the heat: 

Above, the mantel should not lack 

For curios and bric-a-brac — 

Not much, but just enough to light 

The room up when the fire is bright. 

The volumes on this wall should be, 

All prose and all philosophy, 

From Plato down to those who are 

The dim reflections of that star; 

And these tomes all should serve to show. 

How much we write — how little know; 

For since the problem first was set 

No one has ever solved it yet. 

Upon the shelves toward the west 

The scientific books shall rest; 

Beside them, History ; above, — 

Religion — hope, and faith, and love: 

Lastly, the southern wall should hold 

The story-tellers, new and old; 

Haroun al Raschid, who was truth 

And happiness to all my youth, 

Shall have the honored place of all 

That dwell upon this sunny wall, 

And with him there shall stand a throng 

Of those who help mankind along 

More by their fascinating lies 

(Than all the learning of the wise. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 13 

Such be the library; and take 

This motto of a Latin make 

To grace the door through which I pass:, 

'Hie habitat F elicit as! 



OUR GARDEN 1 , 



CHAPTER II. 

OUR GARDEN. 

The garden is in part our outdoor world. 
It is microcosmic. There is so much in it and 
we make so much of it and we get so much out 
of it. It is not large, but oh so high, for we 
seem to own all the way up into the blue sky 
pavillioned with its splendid worlds. We fancy 
ourselves to be central to the richest star-fields, 
and I fear that we map out larger regions there 
than our garden here would warrant. But no 
one questions our right, and we delight in the 
upper ownership ; and really it is this conscious 
upper and larger ownership that makes our 
garden world here so very dear to us. We live 
in both and from both get fine yields of roses 
and fruits, great thoughts and lasting inspira- 
tions. 

That a garden should always possess a defi- 
nite relation to the house to which it belongs is 
a theory which has never been disputed; but 
exactly what that relation should be has always 
been a matter of disagreement among different 
schools of landscape gardeners. Some have 

17 



18 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

demanded harmony; others insist upon con- 
trast; others still look upon gardening as a 
form of architecture, maintaining that a gar- 
den is merely the extension of a house into its 
surroundings. A house, if it be more than a 
shelter over your head, must have a definite 
character. There must be a thought dominat- 
ing its designs. In our house that thought is 
openness to sunshine and fresh air and delight- 
ful living. The best rooms look out on the 
garden and take in its aroma and its floods of 
sunlight. 

Our garden's relation to the house was not 
an afterthought, but a vital part of the unity 
plan. The house and garden are one. Sir 
William Temple wrote: "The garden ought to 
be like one of the rooms out of which you step 
into another larger." William Morris said: 
* 'One's garden should look like a part of the 
house." A corollary fact to this house and 
garden relation is, that the garden must not 
only be appropriate to the house, but to the 
situation on which it rests. What is suitable to 
the hillside will not befit the plain, what is be- 
coming to the classic mansion would be out of 
place for the picturesque house. And yet the 
lines must not be too rigidly drawn, for there 
are certain features in the living home and liv- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 19 

ing garden that will always be in common ; the 
lawns and walks and arbors and shady nooks 
and flowering shrubs and graceful trees, and, 
above all, the flowers, the early and late, tall 
and short, bright and somber in color, suited to 
the season and space and so correlated that 
they seem to grow out of each other most natu- 
rally. Art must combine with nature and put 
things at their best and avoid artificiality. 

The hedge was another feature of the old 
English garden and is yet a favorite. It is not 
a fence and yet it is, ornamental and useful 
when of the best material and rightly kept. It 
is always rich in suggestions, for there is so 
much of it and in it, tangled yet trimmed, a 
thicket and yet poetic, a protection from just 
what a garden needs protection. It breaks the 
line of vision, environs you and yours with an 
extra personal sanctity and seclusion, it defines 
ownership by marking boundaries and makes 
your little world extremely dear to your thought 
and care. In America few people understand 
the charm of an inclosed garden. We have 
run mad in trying to destroy reasonable boun- 
daries between our own and our neighbors' 
grounds. A high fence is ugly no matter what 
its pattern, but the hedge fits into our needs 
and so we keep it and our garden grows friend- 



20 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

lier and more homelike in quiet possession and 
enjoyment. 

Our garden gets all the sun and rain and 
r dew the heavens can afford, and that is most 
luxuriant. Growth and beauty and fruit are 
instinct in every inch of soil. Ours is not a rose 
garden, nor a fruit garden, is not exclusively de- 
voted to any one thing, it has great variety and 
so enhances the interests of all and adds charm. 
1A rose garden is beautiful, ours is still more so. 
We have roses, Ruth says there are over twen- 
ty varieties, most of them are rare, and all of 
them choice. A rose is a — rose, full definition 
is in seeing and sniffing! A garden of tulips, 
one sees them at perfection in Holland, is a 
rare and lovely sight; ours is lovelier, for we 
have tulips, but we have more, plenty of vel- 
vety lawn, flowering shrubs, native and exotic, 
and trees for shade and fruit. 

The delights of a garden are manifold, the 
chief one is in working it yourself. Growth is 
compensation, especially if under your own 
touch. What early mornings it necessitates. 
What exquisite pictures of unpaintable morn- 
ing light are displayed. What appetisings and 
health and vigor. Each hour has its appealing 
beauty and opportunity, for pleasure and work 
are ever at hand if one be sympathetic and pur- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 21 

poseful. What sunshine and shadows, what 
companionships and seclusions, what medita- 
tions and inspirations. Let the world's resdess 
and noisy pageant go by and go on with its 
drums and pennons and shouts — what of it all? 
Life is here and joy and beauty and God. Here 
one toils and rests, rebuilds and reinvigorates, 
and goes again into the great world-strife 
stronger and kindlier. Blessed is he who owns 
a garden or can occasionally walk in one or can 
at least look over hedges, taking in visions and 
breaths, feeling for a little another world im- 
pinging on this or springing up out of it, a twin 
of it. 

One's garden seems so much more real and 
human, so much more worthy of care and pet- 
ting, if one can feel a personal relation to it, if 
it can be individualized. Surely there are in- 
dividual likings and dislikings between persons 
and plants. Do they not grow better and 
more gladly for one than another? Are they 
not sensitive to care and culture? Is this fact 
or fancy? We are oft puzzled over this, and 
all we know about it is that our personal rela- 
tions to our flowers and plants and trees are 
full of special delight; it certainly adds new 
zest to our walks and work and appreciably in- 
tensifies our joys. Ferns do not seem to love 



22 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

folks, they would grow away from them if they 
could. They have affinities for trees and quiet 
places. There is a particular fern that grows 
generously under balsamic shadows and will not 
seek any other tree. The lady fern will grow 
best in the sugar-maple camps. Ferns are a 
loyal folk in the vegetable world, strong in their 
preferments and attachments, but coldly turn 
from too intimate human friendship, yet in the 
garden they will flourish if you give them a 
quiet and shady nook. They like your care, 
but not your touch. The white clover and dan- 
delion are as much domestic plants as cats and 
dogs are domestic animals. They choose to 
live near the house, and thrive best under the 
tread of human beings. They always seem to 
feel that we give them the guest-chamber and 
pet them with extra hospitality. 

Ah! that grand old grape-vine How sweetly 
fragrant its blossoming, how delicious those 
quivering threads of odor you gather as you 
pass near it. There is more than a hint of 
paradise in it, you feel sure of angelic presence 
and passing. Oft it comes to you at a dis- 
tance, wafted on gentle breaths. You know it 
at once, and wonder how it got so far away, 
and how it kept its sweet odor intact. There 
is nothing quite like it for rich delicacy. We 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 23 

often walk the narrow bypath near it, just to 
get whiffs of its saintly benediction — for bene- 
diction it is to every possible sense. Our grape- 
vine has so many beauties and virtues we never 
tire of looking at it and talking about it. It is 
such a living symphony of generosity and joy, 
so illustrative of grace and sculptured beauty, 
so overflowing in its elusive flower-odor. Then 
its exquisite leaves, beautiful in tender and ta- 
king colors, its fruit most delicately hued with 
an inconceivably delicious blush baffling all art 
attempt at reproduction; then its wine, so sym- 
bolic, so health-giving to the enfeebled. Blessed 
old grape-vine ! 

My garden is my paradise, and why not? 
Beautiful things are right; there is no grace in 
ugly things and hard usage and self-denial ; the 
old monks thought so and grew in grace — per- 
haps. But I grow in grace most in the excel- 
lent condition of my garden, when weeds are 
removed, the lawn moist and velvety, flowers 
blossoming and shrubs putting on rich growths 
of leaves and burdened with red and purple and 
pink and white blossoms, and all lading the air 
with choice perfumes. Things in good work- 
ing condition and I grow glad, gladder than I 
can say or think. Somehow, there is between 
us and our garden a most friendly understand- 



24 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ing. We work diligently and nature supplies 
the living material, and that is the best part of 
it; craft can vary its growth, art can accentuate 
and frame its charms, but its everchanging 
beauty is God's priceless gift. 

These spring and summer days are so rich 
and opportunal, everything feels the pulse of 
life. The birds show it and sing at their best, 
their songs fairly bubbling over with glee. They 
greet the dawn so cheerily and farewell the sun 
with more plaintive tones. How they vie with 
each other in zest and variation, and to which 
the prize should be awarded we could not and 
would not tell, it would be a breach of soul 
delight. 

There is that exuberant Thrasher sur- 
charged with raptures, which the songful hours 
of the day are not enough that he may sing it 
all out. There on the very tree-top, with his 
throat bared to the heavens, with drooping 
vrings in sensuous delight, he pours forth his 
tireless torrent of rich and varied song, easily 
leading the chorus. That Catbird, shy ven- 
triloquist and occasional passionate, poetic 
singer, nesting down near the brook Arno, how 
he delights to sing at daybreak in the mountain 
ash close to our window, always welcome 
though he always wakens us ! But what a gen- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 25 

tie and precious wakening, his notes so quiet 
and joyous and with such an endless play of 
liquid sweetness, running with simplest grace 
through all the charming snatches of best songs 
he has picked up or better created on the spot 
out of a glad, full heart. Ruth always throws 
him something as a compensation, he prizes it, 
and softly sings us to sleep again. 

How joyously Bob White calls out his own 
name, as if in love with it, and perches on log 
or stump and prophesies "more wet," and hits 
it as oft as the weather bureau man. The Yel- 
low Warbler flits about to his favorite thistles 
and gets but little, and blithely chirps as if it 
were a feast. The Meadow Lark whirs vigor- 
ously up from his favorite clover patch near 
the stone wall. At eventide the Thrushes are 
in fine voice, and use it to perfection and know 
it — why not? So do all the best singers and 
speakers among folk. But the Robing plain- 
tive vesper song with choice variations is surely 
the popular choice of evening melodies. 

I wish everyone could have a garden and, 
having it, knew enough and loved it enough to 
care for it. To many it would be a torment, 
and so would anything demanding cost and 
care. Our garden is a perpetual delight. 
Never more beautiful than at early morning 



26 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

unless it be at eventide. The roses claim the 
choicest perfume if the grape-vine puts not in 
its plea ; flowers and shrubs insist on first atten- 
tion, but the orchard will not take second place ; 
the Lombards, tall and sentinel-like, old bache- 
lors, demand the tree-prizes, but the White 
Birches plead for it with such womanly grace, 
and then the Elm is so stately and the Spruce is 
so graceful and the Oak so rugged and the 
Maple so tasteful — ah! who can award the 
palm? Surely not in the garden, for things 
are as sensitive as folks, and going about we 
pet them all and whisper words of personal 
cheer and all are happy and live in peace. 

It spices one's days to overcome difficulties. 
Digging in early spring is a delight in every 
w r ay, later when it must be done and it is hot it 
grows burdensome — but nothing comes of 
nothing, no outgo no income, no seed no har- 
vest, no hard weeding, no splendid growths. 
How the flowers are beginning to bloom, the 
sweet rains and warm days and extra care, and, 
somehow, I feel, or fancy I feel, that some lit- 
tle garden fairies have hovered over these beds 
and waved their wands and uttered magic 
words and forth the flowers came spontan- 
eously. We have a carnival of flowers, and 
our garden joy is as flush as pinks. The four- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 27 

o'clocks are out, a homely flower but I love 
them, they make such a splash of color close to 
the kitchen door, and the whole house senses 
their sweetness at the tea hour. That group of 
lilies, so like white sentinels that have strayed 
through the gates of paradise, occupy the best 
spot in the garden, and the spot never looked 
nicer and the lilies never sweeter; place and 
product fit. "Those vulgar red peonies," so 
some one heartlessly said the other day. I re- 
buked them by saying, "Nay, not so, not vulgar 
but beautiful and full of color, and because 
Mother loved them, they are very dear to me 1" 
Their red is intense, and I think it is the 
people's color as it is nature's pet. Eugene 
Field was asked his favorite color and replied, 
"It don't make any difference if it is only red." 
The hollyhocks have unfolded their silken buds 
and the whole long stalks are things of beauty. 
Sweet peas in that patch yonder are nodding in 
the breeze like little ships rocking in the harbor, 
or, as Shelley says, "Winged and on tip-toe as 
for flight," but worth their weight in gold as 
a breakfast bouquet. What a kingly luxury to 
wander about one's garden and receive homage 
in nods and winks and rustles and perfumes. 
One cannot worry much in a garden, for there 
is always much to do, and what you have done 



28 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

looks nicely and everything doubly grateful, 
and the birds as if acting mediators dispense the 
cheeriest of songs. What we most long to do 
is what God intends us to do, and we must force 
the doors that are ajar and enter and find our 
place. 

This blossoming of our garden in springtime 
is endless in its surprises. The dull stalk or twig, 
so unlike beauty and fragrance, seems so utter- 
ly dead and useless, but let the warm breath 
of the South come and breathe into them and 
about them and the genial showers moisten 
them, and the sunshine play through them and 
coax them, forthwith there is a heavenly 
thought upspringing from a dull and musty 
form, and a strange coming forth of life. These 
early spring days we fairly live out of doors, 
oblivious of tan and dirt and work, watching 
closely every plant and tree, though we know 
just what is coming into life, but none the less 
it is a miracle of beauty and grace. These 
transformations of dull brown things into a 
delicacy of look and sweetness of flavor makes 
the Divine Transfiguration so natural and easy 
of acceptance. Our garden is the story and 
picture of life, prophetic of coming life. So 
that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be 
but we know that when He shall appear, we 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 29 

shall be like Him." There is a possible Eden 
in every garden. Not every one senses it nor 
sees Him Who walks it as of old, touching it 
into beauty and distilling His thoughts into its 
exquisite coloring and sweetness. Our garden 
grows more and more into a Paradise. I won- 
der if the word "garden" now so popular in 
literature, does not root itself back into that 
primitive paradise where began human life in 
the world's dawn? 

Thomas Edward Brown, an English poet, 
not as well known as he ought to be, puts well 
our thought — 



" A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot I 

Rose plot, 

Fringed pool, 

Ferned grot — 

The veriest school 

Of peace; and yet the fool 

Contends that God is not — 

Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? 

Nay, hut I have a sign: 

'Tis very sure God walks in mine!" 

In our garden there are such rare days of end- 
less variety, such mornings and evenings, such 
sunshine and shadow, such loyalty and loveli- 



30 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ness. One can easily miss it all and see only 
the prosaic side of utility. I cannot keep a 
garden account and reckon the price of each in- 
describable joy. Is it not cheap at any price? 
Beauty cannot be commercialized. Really, it 
hurts me to keep exact accounts of all the out- 
goes and incomes of my garden of dreams and 
delights. My joys are too great and intense 
to fit into the ruled pages of a cash-book. 
Rather, they must be as free as the breezes and 
birds and sunshine that play at will in every 
part. 

The laying out of one's garden may be con- 
sidered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry 
and painting. It requires study, planning and 
sketching, simple and elaborate. How that 
first winter's leisure evening hours were spent 
in studying florists' catalogues, nature books, 
and almost infinite "garden series," so rich and 
varied, taken from the public library. So many 
had we taken that the librarian facetiously re- 
marked, as she handed out the fiftieth volume, 
"It seems to me you have the v garden craze." I 
nodded and bore away my books in eager 
ecstasy, and only thought of a long evening be- 
fore us around the center-table, noting and dis- 
cussing possible and vital points. 

What form and color schemes presented 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 31 

themselves, for they go together in garden 
study. House and sun, slope and tree, shrub 
and flower all figured in plans, and it was 
months before the real garden was complete on 
paper. Often a new flower was brought to our 
notice by friends, and it must go into our plans, 
but its height and color would modify and 
change, and then would follow the work of re- 
adjusting. But it was a delightful winter of 
mental exploration and spoil-finding. The lay- 
ing out of our garden was a liberal art indeed, 
liberal in money and time and books and study, 
and now the after-thoughts of it all are liberal 
in remembered joys. Real joys cost and pay! 
The landscape gardener's task is to produce 
beautiful pictures full of color and harmony. 
There is no spot on earth he could not improve 
and beautify. He is only limited by questions 
of time and money. He can count on perfec- 
tion in details which painter and sculptor never 
get, and his details have always the advantage 
of being alive and full of expression. Light 
and atmosphere are the difficult things to get on 
the canvas, but the gardener produces both with 
endless variations. Nature furnishes him free- 
ly with best materials, light, atmosphere, color, 
imposing forms, but the designs are vitally es- 
sential, and must be of his own conceiving. His 



32 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

aim is never ideal, but real, ever to idealize the 
real is in the power of the true garden artist. 
Hence the imagination is very important to 
bring into unity the elements of use and beauty. 

We do not claim the mastery of the gar- 
dener's art, not even assuming the name; we 
are garden lovers and workers, but the pleasure 
of study and scheming in combinations has 
broadened our conceptions of Nature's possi- 
bilities and brought us into closer sympathy 
with her in all her moods and tenses. 

The old gardens are the melodies of earth 
and time and heart. They live only in recol- 
lection, but to some of us how they do live! 
The dear old people who worked them, and 
plucked their flowers and gathered their fruits 
have turned aside and passed on. So has the 
garden of to-day grown away from the old 
order, just as society has grown away from the 
old spindle-wheels and bake-ovens and shoe- 
buckles and figured waistcoats. Occasionally 
we find shreds and patches of the old garden 
days, some of its old-fashioned flowers, its 
hollyhocks and honeysuckles, larkspurs and 
bachelor buttons, lady slippers and poppies, 
daffodils and marigolds, bits of old box-hedges 
as prim as a Puritan pastor — yes, the old will 
linger a little because deserving, but we cannot 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 33 
bring back the old-time gardens and ideals, ours 
is the grander privilege of living to-day with 
all its throb of enterprise and swing of destiny ! 



OUT OF DOORS. 



CHAPTER III. 

OUT OF DOORS. 

This out of doors love was born in me, and 
what harvests of joy it brings. Some people 
do not well know that God is out of doors, out 
where the wild flowers struggle and thrive, out 
where the desert keeps tryst with bewitching 
moonlight, where clouds settle on great moun- 
tains and pour floods down their rough sides, 
where the sweet eglantine blooms and the 
fringed gentian nestles, and where the squirrels 
gather their nuts and chatter their scolds ; sure- 
ly the great wide out of doors is His and He 
made it and watches it, ever haunting it as 
'Jesus did the mountains and the sea. Yes, I 
will see all of this for He made it and pro- 
nounced it very good; yes, and I'll find Him in 
His out of doors world and walk with Him and 
learn of His wisdom. Life and nature are as 
books whose best pages are yet uncut. Who 
knows what is hidden away out yonder under 
the great open sky? So much to see, so little 
seen and less known, so many summers gone to 
waste and we impoverished. The limitation* 

37 



38 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

are not out there but within ourselves. Having 
eyes and see not — blind and blameworthy. So 
many wonderful mornings and evenings. So 
few to see them, so much music no one hears, 
so many hillsides of beauty and mountains of 
grandeur and no artist to catch inspiration, and 
yet God is somehow storing it for unborn 
generations who will see and sense. 

They are not poor who have vision and 
hunger of soul back of it. They are not iso- 
lated who know fields and flowers, clouds and 
stars. These become companions, teachers and 
inspirers. To travel far is not our need, rather 
it is to know our surroundings and have things 
report their doings to us. This is the royal 
dignity of sons and daughters — this is to see 
and know Him in His out of doors. Certain- 
ly sure am I God searched His treasuries of 
knowledge when He planned this world. He 
might have made a bigger world and has, but 
never one more packed with thought and wis- 
dom and power and beauty. Everywhere and 
in every way it is apparent. Every investiga- 
tion reveals deeper mysteries and greater rela- 
tions and more infinite possibilities! 

Blessed is he who loves the wide out of doors 
and searches through it as for hid treasures. 
What rich finds of health and vigor and all- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 39 

night sleeps. Out there how one wants to run 
as when a boy and fish and swim and climb 
trees and throw stones and race with the dog — 
alas ! age and dignity oft forbid but do not sup- 
press the unspeakable delight of body and soul 
in the conscious sense of sunlight and wind and 
fragrances and melodies. Choice picture gal- 
leries of masterpieces are ever open to him who 
has soul-vision. Spring is an apt designer, and 
is not the livelong year a rich colorist? To 
give the palm for artistic grace to any part of 
the year is folly, for nature to her lovers is al- 
ways beautiful, always pictorial. 

So is the quiet country spot beautiful where 
nothing goes on, where everything is finished, 
no sound of hammer or ringing trowel, no piles 
of stone and brick and lumber. Nothing but 
the sweet quietude of the unbroken stillness. 
Our garden often seems like this to us. It is 
so thoroughly countrified. Here the very whis- 
pers of nature are soothing, her voices are 
melodious, the aroma of her pines and spruces 
are so pungent, the music that comes from 
breezes playing through shrubs and trees is in- 
describably plaintive yet pleasant. 

There is a bit of our garden known as the 
"Den." The Arno flows across the lower cor- 
ner of our lot for about fifty feet and cuts off a 



40 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

triangular spot. It is screened at either end to 
keep in the fishes. A rustic bridge spans it, 
and over there is a wild and tangled mass of 
ferns, a dozen varieties rich in growth, a de- 
lightful eye-feast. A tall pine is in the corner, 
a veritable bird tower. Crows and hawks and 
grackles and kingfishers and blue jays alight in 
it to spy out our liberty. What hearty scraps 
they often have up there, always worsted, how- 
ever, for the King-Bird nests just below in the 
elderberry bush. Shrubs line the stream and 
quite hide our literary den, for this is our real 
summer workshop. The Wood-Thrush has his 
nest close by, the Cat-Bird's nest is not twenty 
feet away, the Robin is up in the pine almost 
overhead, the Chickadees are in the alders, the 
Song-Sparrow is down in the willows close to 
the ground, and all of them are so tame. We 
never go to their nests and so they chirp and 
sing all about us, and bathe frequently in the 
Arno. But what an ideal place for study. 
These articles are written out here from four 
to eight in the morning. Such conditions would 
inspire any brain and spirit. Why should I 
wish to enter the indoor study of the city 
though filled with books and pictures, when I 
possess the unexhausted treasures of this out- 
door ideal study here. Everything means some- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 41 

thing when one is in love with outdoor life. IAt 
every turn life greets you and imparts a subtle 
sympathy. Trees rustling their leaves never 
so gently, I hear it all and feel it; loosened 
petals fall to the ground with such a caressing 
touch and mother earth receives them so kindly, 
I see it and feel it; fragrances float about me, 
and seem as persons from another world on 
errands of grace bringing the sweetness of the 
heavenlies, I sense it all keenly; sunshine and 
shadow play perpetually about me because of 
clouds or treewavings, and give endless color- 
ings ; insensibly it mingles with my thought and 
imprints itself on my page. What one feels 
one can think and in part express, but only in 
part — an echo merely; but it hints the rich and 
deep original melodies that play in the audi- 
ence chamber of the soul! 

One's best thoughts and purposes come while 
out under the open sky. Outdoor life is full 
of mental tonic. It puts one in love with home- 
ly ways and wholesome aims, nature touches 
most helpfully one's better self in every way. 
When Cowper wrote "O for a lodge in some 
vast wilderness," he touched the keynote of our 
kinship to the natural world. We are coming 
to appreciate nature and our need of it as never 
before. Our children are learning how to use 



42 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and enjoy It that they may gain the profit. 
Their quickened pulse and marvellous appetite 
and perfect health-color and stored energy for 
future play and work all come of outdoor life. 
How they do love the garden, its clumps of 
flowers, its winding paths and generous lawns; 
they have the liberty of it and use it to the full, 
rain or shine. Lionel is very fond of them. 
We told him the other day they were coming; 
he danced and fairly howled his delight, and 
when they came he was the happiest dog in the 
world! But there is one he misses; he went 
to each and sniffled recognition, and then looked 
about at us in a puzzled way. Yes, he misses 
Rossignol, our precious grandson, and so do 
we. How tender and precious his memory. 
Yet the heavens are nearer and dearer and 
more real for his beautiful life there. But 
those two rollicking boys, Danforth and Don- 
ald, how they run and romp and tumble over 
each other and over the dog. They can do 
anything with him and he accepts it in good 
faith, and is happy because they are gentle and 
kind. But how tenderly he regards the baby 
Helen, as if she were his sole care, so proud of 
her as she toddles by his side or rides on his 
back. Two other boys are borrowed from our 
neighbors, and what a four-in-hand team. What 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 43 

plannings are necessary, what adjusting of com- 
plicated relationships, what extra lunches, what 
occasional trips out in the fields, what readings 
and stories to appease mental hunger, what — « 
alas! what not? Our daughter said, in the 
presence of. visitors, that I was as much a boy 
as any that played in the garden, and why not? 
Young in heart and perfect in health, and 
abounding in exuberance, why not unlimber and 
actualize the longing of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes in his poem, "Would I were a boy 
again ! 

Bettie has found mates, and what magpies 
ever chatted more heartily and giggled more 
constantly, and delightedly. The neighbor- 
hood is well stocked with children, and so there 
is a happy round of visits and lunches and 
dances and parties and rides anc lawn festivals, 
illuminated by Chinese lanterns and more bril- 
liantly by boys and girls and women. We or- 
ganized a crowd of boys eager for a fishing 
excursion, five miles distant, three grown-ups 
and seven boys. What a time. I don't won- 
der that Caesar paused on the banks of the 
Rubicon; would we undertake it all again? 
Think of the care and caution, the carryall 
ride, the boat and lake, baiting hooks, un- 
tangling lines, stringing fish, climbing trees,. 



44 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

bathing, racing, songs and shouts and uproar- 
ious laughter at just nothing at all — a wild, free 
and happy mob of seven boys. Go again? 
Yes! A hundred times over if need were. 
Such a happy little crowd, such buoyant life, 
strenuous life, life at white heat, life tingling 
to the very tips of fingers and toes and tongue 
— the sight of it all and a share in it all com- 
pensation ample. At last, home safe, and a 
lot of mother anxiety unloaded, and such a sup- 
per and such stories of sights and scenes of ex- 
periences; and then what dreams of boys and 
boats and fish, etc., etc. 

Quiet enough by and bye, for September is 
coming and will call them away to school and 
office and home. But what color they have put 
on, what restful, happy looks they wear, how 
hearty in mind and body, eager for the ham- 
mocks or Lionel or their mates, or, catching 
sight of me, plead for a story. 

"A story, well what shall it be about?" "Oh, 
give us another chapter of 'Jock and Tille.' 
This "Jock and Tille story" was all about two 
well-behaved rats and their children, told in 
installments when their mothers were mere 
lassies, a generation ago, and still they serve for 
amusement and instruction and some day, not 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 45 

far off, in tasty book form, may serve a wider 
constituency. 

Let me rehearse another bit of our outdoor 
life before I am done. The source of our 
river, the Lepeyre, is only five miles distant, 
though it has a run of twenty miles before it 
reaches Clarksville, our factory village. We 
visited this source spot the other day with 
choice friends, that we might take in a little 
extra out-of-door life. The place is ideal, a 
great hillside forming a sort of amphitheater, 
densely wooded, from which flow three springs, 
forming a gem of a lake. The woodland 
slopes down on all sides to the very water's 
edge, and casts mystic shadows amidst a silence 
almost primeval. Trees and shrubbery are 
mirrored back as if the lakelet were just proud 
of its forest fringe. 

Here we sat on moss-covered banks, cool 
and refreshing, enjoying that indescribable 
luxury of talking with nature face to face and 
feeling the intimacy. It was near noon and the 
day was perfect. A pair of thrushes made soft 
music in their twitterings as they fed u the wee 
birdies. ,, Through the densely leaved branches 
the glinting sunlight pierced here and there, 
adding bright patches of golden color. The 
little fish jumped nimbly for their flies, squir* 



46 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

rels and birds came and drank, and were quick- 
ly off, peering at us and chattering a bit. 

The whole place was as a Fairies' Parlor; 
the hours spent there seemed the very acme of 
an outdoor enjoyment, such as poet and artist 
would covet for inspiration. Thought and 
memory work easily out here, and imagination 
deftly takes up the remembered things and 
their thought-colorings, and out of them all 
works pictures to suit the dreamy and restful 
mood. Imagination is a wonderful designer 
and colorist. The scenes of that day and its 
experiences are all pictures and hung on the 
walls of our "chamber of imagery." It is 
Charles Lamb, I think, who said every man 
should have a hobby. One with a hobby is able 
to turn spare moments to good account. A 
holiday becomes a delight when ones knows 
how to spend it. That hobby is best that takes 
us outdoors and into close contact with nature 
in quest of the best things for body and brain. 
Out here we are absorbing rest and taking on 
vitality and making it easier to think and be 
courteous and philanthropic and saintly. The 
grace of nature is just royal in the way it lubri- 
cates this human machine and makes it run 
noiseless and frictionless. 

It is high noon and we look out on the charm- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 47 

ing valley that reaches far out and away. What 
floods on floods of beauty fairly steep the earth 
and feed the richer life of mountain and valley 
for fruitage. The fields are everywhere em- 
broidered with buttercups and daisies, other 
flowers are waving u red, white and blue" above 
the dark grass, taking in color and breathing 
out the very breath of angelic fragrance. The 
wild flowers, bold and hardy and sweet lie at 
our feet and lure us to pluck and sniff ; they suc- 
ceed. Song Sparrows do love to sing at the 
noon hour, possibly because they have few or 
no rivals at that hour, and how delicious their 
songs. 

Instinctively we catch the poetic spirit and 
personify books and rivers and trees and flow- 
ers, and give them an individuality like our 
own, and talk to them and evoke from them 
choicest reminiscence of subtlest poetry. Here 
begins the Lepeyre, but how and where does it 
end? What interests does it awaken and de- 
velop and foster? Who can tell its history? 
For long, long centuries it has been flowing 
endlessly on doing generous work and pouring 
its waters into the sea. But what a ministry 
it has in its fifty miles ; what farms it irrigates, 
what trees along its banks it nourishes, what 
fish live in it and what boats glide over it, what 



48 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

bathers in summer and skaters in winter enjoy 
it, what wheels it turns, what picturesque beauty 
it adds to the scenery. It is never selfish, but 
generous and prized in a hundred ways by the 
dwellers along its shores. We have often 
walked from its source to the mills and seen its 
widening and deepening, its meadows and pas- 
tures and orchards and towns and villages and 
peoples — have seen it all, and yet not all. The 
deepest appeal of the whole valley scenery is 
ever to the imagination, for it is nowhere wild 
except at its fountain-head, and never tumult- 
uous except at the mills where it runs its rocky 
sluiceway. 

The Lepeyre has no commerce and cares for 
none, the steel track takes that and is welcome 
to its noise and smoke and tug and toil. All 
along its sinuous march there is prosperity. 

Nature brings out her best and apparels her- 
self gorgeously. Nothing specially holds the 
attention for the loveliness is diffused. Beauty 
lies like a magical veil over the whole land- 
scape, concealing nothing yet touching every- • 
thing with a subdued richness that one loves to 
look at long and oft — a richness that seems a 
trick or a gift of imagination. 

Along its whole course, riding or walking, 
one sees splendid fields of grain or corn in long, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 49 

clean rows lying open to the sun, shimmering in 
its light and heat ; meadows stretching far away 
with rich growths of clover and timothy; gar- 
dens laden with fragrance and fruit; long lines 
of low hedges green and trim; bits of openings 
at bends of the river that look far away and 
give a poetic perspective ; cottage homes adding 
peculiar touches of real life, carrying associa- 
tions of great men and women who were born 
or lived there ; brooks emptying their sparkling 
waters into the full flowing river as if glad to 
be rid of the burden of individuality; winding 
paths that run away from the river back into 
the woods or up into the hills and how clearly 
you see their source, so alluring to the eye; 
these all offer chances of intimacy with nature 
which the great highways cannot give. 

Every look and turn is alive with fresh in- 
terest. The roads are fine, the farms are pro- 
ductive, the villages are thrifty, the people are 
content, the day is perfect, the sky is cloudless, 
over and over again we exclaim — how rich and 
lovely this outdoor life ! 



1 The pleasure in my heart I bore 
Long after it was seen no more" 



BEAUTY, 



CHAPTER IV. 

BEAUTY. 

There are so many beautiful things in one's 
world. No matter where we are, in what 
tropic or season, day or night, on the ground 
or under it, in the air or up in the sky, beauty 
is everywhere and in prodigal profusion. The 
processes of evolution have ever been toward 
the beautiful in whatever realm worked, the 
physical or mental or spiritual. That is the 
very law of its progress. It ever has been so 
and ever will be so. Each hour of each season 
carries its own light, tinting things and 
thoughts. How endless its play and perfect 
its charm. Once the eye trained to beauty de- 
tects it everywhere and in its every-varying 
moods, now in the atmosphere, on the lawn, 
through and all about the swaying trees, suf- 
fusing flower-beds and shrubs, far out over the 
receding landscape, even to the background of 
mountains touching the horizon. 

The pencillings of light are everywhere ar- 
tistic and exquisite. Color, in endless variety, 
plays enchantress with life's commoner things 

53 



54 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and enhances values. Art and light are ever 
dealing in values and shifting opinions and 
creating options. Which month sits supremest 
as queen of the year and governs most indul- 
gently, no twentieth century committee could 
decide. Yes, the world in cosmos is at our 
door, we feel the fullness of its beauty and over- 
flow. So many sense only what is congenial 
and agreeable, and this only in fit seasons. 
"Eyes have they, but they see not," has a wider 
significance and application than the old 
prophet conceived. To him idols were vision- 
less and powerless, and so are folks who live 
stolidly in God's world of beauty. 

"There's beauty all around our paths 

If but our watchful eyes 
Could trace if mid familiar things 

And through their lowly guise/' 

Beauty is ever present and vital in Nature. 
It is God's tender thought for the race. It 
voices in tones that impress and awaken keen- 
est interest. The essence of beauty is felt in 
the pleasure it incites. Man was made for 
beauty as the eye for light. Keats, in that 
matchless idyl, "Endymion," has voiced an im- 
mortal line — 

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever. 19 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 55 

Beauty is its own excuse for being. It is a 
ministry to the higher longings of human 
hearts. God is and forever must be the Per- 
sonification of Beauty, not alone the infinitely 
intellectual and ethical being. Hence the 
aesthetical faculty is as actual and valid a part 
of man's nature as his reason. Without this 
faculty or power he must be an alien in this 
universe of beauty. God's creations are an in- 
finite art gallery; Heaven must be infinitely 
beautiful as well as infinitely holy. When God 
created man He placed him in a garden, the 
very masterpiece of beauty — -a paradise. The 
-characteristics of beauty in creation are God- 
spelling characteristics ; hence we have a Gospel 
of natural beauty, not inconsistent with that 
other and higher Gospel in which may be found 
rich inspirations for highest delight and cul- 
ture. 

Great poets like David, Dante and Brown- 
ing, great artists like Phidias, Michael Angelo 
and Millet, great musicians like Gregory, Mo- 
zart and Wagner, are its prophets and psalm- 
ists. What sublime utterances they give ; what 
wondrous revelations declare; what tones and 
values and qualities proclaim. Its incense 
floats upward from innumerable golden cen- 
sers in garden and field. Its shrines are by 



56 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

every wayside, its cloisters are in every solitude, 
its altars are every mountain. The hum of in- 
sects, the singing of birds, the rippling flow of 
streams, the rush and roar of cataracts, the 
whisperings of the tree-tops, the thunderings 
that shake the earth, the deep and powerful 
diapason of the grand old ocean, these all blend 
and are its magnificats and jubilates. He 
whose heart is touched and soul thrilled and 
filled is a willing worshipper, taking in purity 
and beauty, and putting on power. God has 
many avenues of approach to the palatial spirit 
of man and many ways of satiating his deep 
spiritual longings. 

The attractiveness of our garden is not a re- 
mittent trait, it is perennial. Its extra charm 
begins in the early spring and lasts through all 
the blossoming and fruiting year, and through 
all the winter as well; for the winter has its 
peculiar pleasures and delights, and beauty 
forms an endless pastime. I never saw so 
much real beauty in the winter time as in this 
last one. What delicate frost tracery, what 
exquisite snowflakes taking on all possible 
forms of crystallization. How gray and leaden 
and chilly the sky, how fitful and gusty the 
wind, how biting the cold. Yes, but master it 
as the boys do and it grows genial and con- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 57 

genial ; dress for it, and push out and see what 
endless charms it has for you. There is al- 
ways, so much mystery in it, things are all so 
covered and hidden away. Trees are laid bare, 
strange birds call out glad notes from the woods 
and fields. Oh! so many strange noises and 
strange silences and sights. The snow is very 
picturesque on tree and bush and fence and 
boulder. 

The brook, once so fairly giggling with dan- 
cing mirth-flows, now is quite hushed and hid- 
den away as if it, too, were a forbidden thing 
to see. I followed our brook up, one clear, 
cold day, for miles, and it was so singularly in- 
teresting and enchanting. I had seen it in the 
spring, and noted the first frog peeps, the first 
watercresses, familiar with its shy and swift 
minnows and the deep places where they lux- 
uriated — now all is locked up under rigorous 
icelids, with here and there a bit of an opening, 
as if a breathing spot; but listening I could 
hear it singing its old glad songs, a little sub- 
dued, yet with no chill in its tone, and I was 
content to await the spring opening. How rich, 
after all, are the snow and ice and winds and 
clouds and cold — and everything. Surely, the 
genuine lover of Nature is in sympathy with all 
her moods and tenses and persons and num- 



58 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

bers, and by what it is governed and to what it 
is related. 

The color-scheme of Nature never remains 
an hour the same. Just now color is swathing 
the land again, and so welcome to the eye and 
heart. It runs and plays the infinite gamut; 
and wise is he and happy who can enjoy it all 
and interpret it all. How in floods of beauty 
it rolls and swells over plain and mountain and 
up into the great sky, breathing forth from eve- 
ry whither at the same moment — just as morn- 
ing light breaks forth in frolicsome mood; chas- 
ing night shadows far off beyond western 
horizons. 

In the earliest spring there appear the deli- 
cate tinges, gradually deepening into richer 
tints, harbingers of brighter days and sweeter 
nights. Then come the whites in color, simple 
and creamy; then white and pink, flushing into 
the unapproachable apple blossoms; then fleecy 
clouds of lilacs, most exquisitely hued, and 
pinks so perfect in flavor; then roses carrying 
color to the very apex of beauty, with fragrance 
more delicate than the "attar of the Orient." 
The great world without beauty to decorate it 
and enrich it and interpret it would be like a 
wild and tangled wilderness — large, indeed, but 
lacking in that grace, which entrances with 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 59 

visions and vistas, leading one into the very 
presence of the Infinite Beauty ! 

If you get simple beauty from Nature and 
life, and naught else, you get about the best 
thing God invents and invests. Beauty is His 
patent. His trademark, and it is indelibly 
stamped on every part of this world and all 
worlds. It is His sign-manual and reveals His 
thought and heart. All artists must sit at 
His feet, must copy his picturings, must study 
His colorings, must absorb His spirit, so lavish 
with endless beauty. I sometimes think and 
feel that God's universe is an infinite gallery 
full even to overflow of painstaking pictures, 
ranging from the infinitely small to the infinite- 
ly great, colored to perfection, glowing in light, 
revealing to mortals the genius touch of an un- 
approached and unapproachable Artist. 

Over yonder in the corner is our spruce tree, 
the Colorado Blue Spruce. Its color is a light 
sage-green, carrying a delicately bluish tone, a 
perfect conical figure, and with its long brown 
cones strikingly ornamental, it is the fullest of 
changing beauty of any tree or shrub about us. 
Its gift is to weave about itself an atmosphere 
of variable beauty and so differentiate itself 
from all other trees, a sort of an aristocrat. 
This tree has a peculiar charm for me. I 



60 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

bought it from the arboretum when it was four 
years old, and the florist said: "You will always 
find delight in this tree." And so it has proved. 
I never see it in its baptism of sunlight but it 
pleases beyond words. I awake in the night 
and oft hear the winds soughing through its 
branches, and I can tell the weather, can see the 
changing light and feel its throbs and sense the 
joy it has in its swing, lullabying the wee nests 
and tiny indwellers. In mist or gentle rain it 
envelopes itself with an airy robe of singular 
beauty. It is a very happy tree, and fills its 
corner admirably. 

I seemed to have from the first a conscious 
sense of the beautiful. I could not define it. 
I felt it and that was highest knowledge. I 
was keenly susceptible to rich emotions and 
ecstasies and tears. A wild flower would ex- 
cite me, bird song, visions of the deep blue sky 
so infinitely far off, sunsets and sunrises. Fine 
prospects would stir me, often I climbed the 
house and barn and high hills on purpose to 
look off. I wanted a wider world to live in 
and feel in, I would push the horizon farther 
back. It was the poetic spirit. The poet feels 
and writes his full pages. The painter feels 
and creates his beautiful pictures. So thou- 
sands feel and exult. It is all alike and akin. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 61 

iWe foolishly educate ourselves away from it 
and cultivate the prosaic and subdued, and so 
play the fool. Now we teach young people to 
cultivate the emotional and harness it to serv- 
ice later on. Little things thrill me now as a 
score of years ago. Singular experiences, 
charming episodes in the novel, striking coinci- 
dences in history and oft I pencil them on book 
margins, or on scraps of paper for pigeon 
holes. 

The old pasture of forty acres had endless 
possibilities for interesting and teaching me. 
Its trees and shrubs and hills and woods and 
brooks. It was an enchanted land, a minia- 
ture cosmos or chaos as suited the fancy. 
Imagination had ample scope for flights and 
flew, and every sense felt and thrilled. Never 
was there such a brook, never such clear and 
limpid water that giggled its joys so gleefully, 
or sung its all-day-long anthems so musically, 
such endless variety of flowers along its banks, 
violets, blue flags and honeysuckles, buttercups 
and daisies, cowslips and steeple tops, willows 
and tag-alders and catkins; minnows so beauti- 
ful and swift, frogs and crickets — everything. 
There was beauty in it all and all was beauti- 
ful. I felt it and that was enough. I know 
now the moral value of emotional and aesthetic 



62 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

enjoyment. The beauty of things rightly un- 
derstood makes life richer in good thoughts 
and deeds. It is one of the highest functions 
of love that it glorifies life by raising and re- 
fining our self-esteem. Because of these thrill- 
ing experiences in the perception of beauty we 
grow better and more conscious of worth as 
estimated by the highest values. 



a 



Were sunshine wine upon my board, 

Boozy every day V d be; 
Were I a miser I would hoard 

All the sapphire of the sea!* 

How the heated air undulates over the fields 
in wavy lines, rolling in endless ripples and 
carrying sunshine into the shady places and far 
into the woods, just as it carries the perfumes 
of flowers. Sunbeams have a mysterious 
power and, magic like, transform all they 
touch. They redden the cherry, gild the ap- 
ple, paint in the incomparable damask of the 
plum as no artist can imitate, color the rose, 
beautify the lily, ripen the wheat and cover the 
earth with that exquisite carpeting of green, 
and withal they touch and paint the face of a 
woman with that beautiful golden brown tint 
of vigorous outdoor life. There is no other 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 63 

hue so singularly and humanely beautiful as 
this inwrought sunshine. The great artists 
knew this tint, Titian, Rubens, and Millet. 
They saw it on the faces of their peasant wom- 
en who gathered fruit or sold it in the markets 
or weeded in the fields. Nothing in nature 
ever puts on such color; nothing in sky, either 
at dawn or midday or sunset. No flower-color 
is comparable to it, or any gem. It is purely 
human, and only found in the human face 
which has absorbed all the sunshine of years 
and transmitted it into beautiful life. Wealth 
and culture cannot buy it, and they who possess 
it walk as the immortals on earth. O the eter- 
nal mystery of Beauty! 



BOOKS AND LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER V. 

BOOKS AND LITERATURE. 

Life out of doors is so abundant and beauti- 
ful, so running over with excessive fullness, so 
keen in its joy to every sense-faculty, no won- 
der it impulses heart-throbs and adds vigor to 
muscles and tingling to nerves. Foliage is in 
full color, flowers fill the air, the lawn is tempt- 
ing to the tread, birds are revelling in gleetide, 
clouds and winds play endless variations serv- 
ing the utilities. Delightful outdoor world. 

But here in the library is life, shelves and 
cases are crowded and charged to the plenum 
with heart and brain, giving out electric energy 
responsive to look and touch. Every book has 
its history, unwritten it may be but there never- 
theless, a history of purpose and thought and 
love. What if the authors are gone, and most 
of them are, it matters not, they served their 
generation, poured out the wealth of their lives 
as thank-offering, and the sound of their reced- 
ing footsteps echoes even yet on the ear. Their 
service is our heritage. 

What a benediction those invisible hands, 

6 7 



68 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

that once toiled so laboriously, are giving as 
they silently reach out over us and over their 
own books. No wonder such books live and 
throb with holy pulsations, and kindle thought 
and intensify life. Every good book is the life- 
blood of some worthy genius. So many books 
are dead — fell dead from the press — there 
were never any life-throes in their birth, writ- 
ten for money, for fame, for self, and not be- 
cause the thought burned within and must be 
given to the world, as the old prophets gave 
their messages. He is wise who has gathered 
into his library, life and heart books. They 
never grow old, never are out of date, always 
full and overflowing, the product of the world's 
best thinking. 

The library is a wonderful place to live in, 
there is no room quite its equal in the home life, 
it is the center for heart and brain. Here have 
been new births, new ideals have sprung up and 
led on, new visions have proved inspirations. 
We do not always know how to live in it and 
utilize its profit, ofttimes the well is deep and 
one has nothing to draw with. It is a luxury to 
own books, it is a greater to know them, still 
greater to have the cultured power and char- 
acter that they are able to give. One may 
have great pleasure in pictures, in music, with- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 69 

out being cultured by them — may pass in and 
out of their society and gain nothing from them 
of any value ; but when these great world books 
enter into him and leave the essence of their 
life and worth, and he has assimilated it all into 
his character and grown strong and wise and 
kind, then is he cultured and has power. One 
may have read the Bible and Shakespeare and 
the poets and the philosophers and be not per- 
ceptibly improved because he read only with 
his outer senses ; he may have travelled, but not 
with his very soul alert and intent; he may have 
seen pictures, but only with the eye ; heard ora- 
torios only with his ear and grew duller as the 
years went on and by. 

Culture comes from exposing one's sensitive 
soul to the very life thoughts and things, and 
so taking them in. Culture is the opening up 
of new experiences, and receiving special con- 
tributions from best sources. We would rather 
find ourselves surrounded by noble folks than 
by ignoble ; this is true in fiction and life. We 
prefer the better class, men and women of pur- 
pose and spirit, who look out on life with great 
hopes and longings and determinations, who 
mingle with their fellows because of the love of 
it, and not for the gain or selfish schemes. One 
can't always have ideal things and persons 



70 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

about him. But in books he can quite find his 
ideal world. His house and library and gar- 
den are of his own making — his refuge, his 
solace. It is only one's own books that become 
one's best friends. The public library is not 
equal to mine. It is larger and fuller, it is 
quite a life necessity, and I consult it freely. 
But my books I touch as man clasps hands with 
genuine friends, and read and mark. So they 
come to have a special interest, they are as tried 
and tested friends. I know them and they 
know me. I may not take them in hand for 
months, but I could not spare them from my 
shelves or sight. The very sight of them is 
full of memories, favorite passages start up as 
remembered dreams. One and his books should 
be as flint and steel, striking fire at every im- 
pact! 

Into every true book some vital part of the 
author himself has gone — his deepest convic- 
tions, his sincerest purposes, his finest feelings. 
It is this inwoven personality that is so interest- 
ing and so profitable for study. The ambition 
of the genuine author and artist is not the mere 
making of himself known in his work. To one 
who reads deeply enough all true poetry and 
literature is autobiographic. The purpose of 
serious reading is not merely to be delighted 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 71 

with beauty of style, not merely to be informed 
and made wise, not merely to be encouraged 
and ennobled in spirit, but to receive an impetus 
in all these directions. It is the man behind 
the book that makes the book worth reading. 
The book is the living image of the man. That 
is why real books have power over us. It is 
individuality that counts. Books are indi- 
viduals. They are the symbols of literature. 
There is no mystery about literature, it is the 
record of thought and emotion in all ages. To 
know it is to know what best things have been 
thought and said and done. It is more than 
this, it is to know the real and better and higher 
lives of the thinkers and doers. The man who 
leaves wide reading and thinking out of his 
mental and spiritual composition and out of his 
means of enjoyment, is most leanly furnished, 
for he does not know the best things said and 
done; and one can't afford such a dire loss. 
Long before books there was literature, tradi- 
tion carried it on from man to man in legend 
and song, and these were the best thoughts and 
feelings and aspirations of life, and so trans- 
mitted from age to age — a survival of the fit- 
test. 

Books are a power. They stand for intel- 
lect and ideas, and ideas rule the world. The 



?2 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

art of reading is the art of investing life with 
best qualifications for living. Books open new 
worlds for conquest, they offer possibilities of 
rare incentive. So many read aimlessly and 
get nothing. So few read for knowledge and 
culture and power. A book and its time mean 
much, just how much who can tell? Out of it 
one may get mind-hunger appeased, heart in- 
spiration to the full for struggles and achieve- 
ments; or he may go over and over again the 
realm of fiction, where passion and intrigue hold 
high carnival, and charr and burn his sympa- 
thies and only get cinders for his hours and 
pains. A book is an opportunity. Oppor- 
tunities are rare. They never repeat their 
first offer. If ever they come again it is like 
the offer of second growth timber, good, but 
not first class. To take up a book without a 
purpose is an opportunity lost for taking up a 
book with a purpose. Purpose is the key to re- 
sults; who will, may unlock and swing wide 
open the portals that lead out into new worlds 
of thought and feeling and action. 

It is the office of best literature to show the 
meaning of life, and the meaning of life is not 
only what it is but what I may be. To fathom 
its meanings is the most universal of human 
longings, the most passionate quest of the race 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 73 

and just here lies our deepest interest in litera- 
ture. Real books, born of heart and brain, 
reveal necessities and capabilities in our being 
never before suspected. Not every book finds 
us in our depths and heights. Some do and 
we re-read them oft because they are medicinal 
and authoritative. How well we recall the 
days and nights when we first read them, the 
thoughts inspired, the determinations regis- 
tered, the new doors that opened and the old 
ones that were shut, the revelations and evolu- 
tions and the larger life that came of it all and 
the beautiful mountain-top visions far out over 
life so full of spiritual suggestion. The litera- 
ture which comes from the best books is the 
most intelligible of all the arts, it is the truest 
exponent of cultured life and the truest incen- 
tive to a cultured life. The study of the best 
literature then is both a duty and a delight, a 
pleasure in and of itself of highest grade, and a 
positive help toward what is best and purest. 
By it one masters those books ranked as gen- 
uine works of art, by it one fits one's self to 
enter into communion with great minds of the 
world's best ages. The talking together about 
books and what they stand for is one of the 
most delightful of social pleasures, out of it 
come mental poise and culture and power. So 



74 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

it is the companionship of books is like that of 
intellectual and refined people, inducing social 
ease, giving wider outlooks, increasing knowl- 
edge and creating deep hunger for life's best 
things. 

Fiction may and indeed must deal with the 
darker side of life, for it has its darker side, 
but it should shed light just where light is 
needed, it should flash the radiance of hope into 
the face of the most hopeless and inspire cour- 
age. A book that fails in this, fails at its most 
vital point and is itself a most dismal failure. 
The bitterest blight of life may be touched into 
health and beauty by the ennobled spirit, the 
most wretched may be lifted into companion- 
ship, the farthest gone may be brought back — ! 
so He says and true fiction must in some way 
involve His life and His truth if it be in any 
way helpful to the overburdened. Be it re- 
membered that life is more than literature, and 
all true literature is but interpretive of life, re- 
vealing its powers, gilding its possibilities, 
opening doors of opportunity and urging in- 
stant decisions. Literature is the mirror in 
which the soul learns to recognize its own linea- 
ments and sense its deeper needs. We cannot 
separate the influences of literature from the 
growth of society and civilization. In fact it is 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 75 

the best literature that gives both society and 
civilization its finest impulses and largest suc- 
cesses. Life would be poor and meagre in- 
deed if bereft of it. 

Imagination is the great realizing faculty. 
Until imagination awakes, nor art, nor litera- 
ture, nor life can do its best work. The char- 
acter of Hamlet, Othello, Imogen, Colonel 
Newcome, Becky Sharp, Bishop Myriel, Doro- 
thy Vernon are simply true to life. No sane 
man supposes that Don Quixote ever did or 
ever could exist. To the intellect the book is 
little more than "a farrago of impossible ab- 
surdities." But the imagination perceives that 
it is true to the fundamental essentials of hu- 
man nature, and that the book is a true and 
worthy book. To the cultivated man, who has 
the keenest sense of reality, and the imaginative 
faculty, is possible the exquisite enjoyment of 
"Henry Esmond," "Les Miserables," "Scarlet 
Letter," "Romola," "Jane Eyre," and hosts of 
others. Fiction that has no imagination, has 
no inspiration and is forceless and useless, and 
very apt to be morbid. The reading of fiction 
has come to have an important and well recog- 
nized place in modern life. No one will deny 
the value of imaginative literature in the de- 
velopment of mind and the formation of 



?6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

character. There is a passion for reading 
which weakens mind and vitiates spirit. One 
should find his way in the literary world as he 
learns geography, by maps, and not by first 
hand explorations, the process is too costly and 
too dangerous. Emerson says wait a year be- 
fore you read a new book! A good sugges- 
tion but most valuable often in its violation. 
Literature and life are interpenetrating each 
other at every vital point and adding strength 
and beauty to each. 

The world of literature is as wide and great 
as the world of life. To read a story, true to 
life, is to live through an emotional experience 
under circumstances very different from your 
own, and full of pleasure and profit. From 
such a story one gains a knowledge of life more 
accurate than that which comes from actual 
life. One can examine and judge of the emo- 
tions in a story as he could not face to face with 
the real events. 

One's library, in content and condition, is 
very like a Palace Wonderful ; such rooms and 
furnishings, halls and corridors, attics and 
niches, and such a variety of real people. This 
palace puzzles and delights me, in it I am lost 
and found, a stranger and well-known, enriched 
and ennobled. We know it only in part, our 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 77 

knowledge is sectional and there are undiscov- 
ered regions. Books like folks are often 
moody, and only when the sign is right can they 
be read to profit. There are times when one 
can take up any book and master it with ease, 
and there are times when you must pet the 
mood. There are times when I demand the 
virile Browning or the dramatic Shakespeare 
or the scholarly Milton or the ornate Haw- 
thorne or the nature-loving Jeffries or the story- 
telling Scott ; then there are times when I do not 
care for serious reading and want to swagger 
with the "Three Musketeers,' 1 to sit down close 
to "Jean Valjean," to dream with the Pynch- 
eons in the old "seven-gabled house, " to laugh 
aloud with Mark Tapley, to sense the keen 
manipulations of Becky Sharp, to feel the great 
sorrows of Silas Marner or the splendid hero- 
ism of John Ridd or affiliate with the gentle- 
manly John Halifax. 

What a magical power of recalling past in- 
tellectual experiences books possess; experi- 
ences that were the beginnings of new epochs 
in our personal history. One may almost re- 
count the stages of mental growth by the titles 
of great books that are here so quietly shelved. 
Here is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." What 
a marvelously new world it opened up to our 



78 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

boyish life; Milton's "Paradise Lost," the 
grandest poem that was ever written, what a 
winter it was to me in my early teens when first 
read. Emerson's "Nature," and Ruskin's 
"Modern Painters," books immortal to me; 
Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," without ex- 
ception the greatest novel of the nineteenth 
century; "Pride and Prejudice," read on just 
recovering from a temporary illness, how 
soothing and restful; "Pickwick," on ship- 
board just from a month in London, and read 
walking and laughing and weeping because it 
was so real and funny; and so on for a score 
and more of the best fiction. How the delight 
and uplift and outlook of those days of first 
communings with these great masters of litera- 
ture come back to us as we take the old volumes 
down and turn anew with tenderness their well- 
worn leaves ! Those marginal notes, personal, 
incidental, historical, artistic and literary; how 
strange they seem to us now, records of our in- 
ner and awakening thought, yet how dear and 
choice — outweighing the very books them- 
selves! How the wonderful law of associa- 
tion interweaves one's past and present with 
vivid colorings, so that one's feelings and 
thoughts and actions are no longer isolated but 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 79 

blended into the fullness and symmetry of a 
glowing life. 

The presence in one's own library of books 
long known and highly esteemed, but not yet 
read, or, only partially so, affords a peculiar 
sensation of stored comfort — like a generous 
balance in one's bank account. A bookcase 
containing nothing unexplored would be like a 
garden in winter without its spring bulbs. The 
books we have read and love are planted there 
like fruit trees out of bearing, with a hidden 
promise of spring blossoming but the uncut 
leaves of our new possessions fold in their 
treasures as the scaly coat of a new lily root 
hides all the possibilities of stem and leaf and 
radiant flower. 

We fondly impute immortality to books. 
Few books have the power of an endless life. 
The great multitude of books are books of use 
which perish with the using. The vast mass, 
like the thoughts in our daily lives, sink into the 
background and furnish the soil from which 
fresh growths spring. There are but few 
books of power. Among them the great Poets 
take rank, they are seers always of the better 
things, high-priests forever after the order of 
humanity, whose messages of flame burn on 
from age to age, consuming and unconsumed. 



80 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

These books of power which live that human- 
ity may not die, and books of use, which die 
that other books may live, divide literature be- 
tween them. They constitute the warp and 
woof out of which the great universities weave 
their higher education. In its last analysis a 
liberal training is the mastery of books of use, 
and a glad yielding to the mastery of books of 
power. 

The survival of any literature is its justifica- 
tion for being. Religion and literature cannot 
be divorced from each other, nor from life. 
Both find their right to be in what they can do 
for the world. Literature reflects the moral 
quality of society. Life and literature act and 
react upon each other beneficially. The litera- 
ture that lives must come from good sources, 
from throbbing brains and palpitating hearts. 
Coleridge has somewhere said, that wherever 
you find a sentence musically worded, of true 
rhythm and melody, there is something deep 
and good in the meaning, too. For body and 
soul, word and idea, go strangely together here 
as everywhere. There has never been a time 
when the sway of literature has been so univer- 
sal and powerful, so reflective of the common 
life. There is no point in life which it does not 
touch, there is no relation that it does not ad- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 81 

just itself to with uplifting force. Literature 
exists for the people. It has profound sym- 
pathy for life's best things. It ever in its ulti- 
mate appeal concludes with the highest truth. 
The Christ is ever in profoundest sympathy 
with the best. Not dogmas and dogmatics but 
truth in life is what He seeks and what it ever 
reflects. Literature in its loftiest reach is ever 
full of the Christ spirit and teaching. Back in 
the first century Paul voiced the combination 
of religion and literature and it has never been 
abrogated; "Whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
good report, if there be any virtue and if there 
be any praise, think on these things. ,, This 
passage is written over the Temple of Holiness 
and over the Hall of Culture ! 



FAIRY NIGHT. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FAIRY NIGHT. 

There is a very substantial and beautiful 
arbor in our garden built many years ago. It 
is a most delightful resting spot in mid-day or 
at eventide, or in one of those rainy and hazy 
days when one wants to be near it all but not 
out in it. It is well supplied with easy chairs, 
a table and lounge and hammock and books, a 
rear room is a convenient place for lighter 
garden tools. It is our out-of-doors-house, al- 
ways in order, always a popular resort to our 
friends and coveted by them when longing for 
a vis-a-vis social hour. Its location commands 
the best sights in our garden, and being on the 
verge of the orchard, its heritage is the aroma 
of flowers and the songs of birds. In fact, it 
is in the center of garden life. There is a bit 
of most interesting romance connected with its 
inception worth noting just here, as it will fur- 
nish the key to our Fairy Tale in this chapter. 

Dr. Pelham, who rebuilt this mansion, had 
at the time two children, Mabel five years old 
and George but two. Mabel was a beautiful 

8* 



86 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

girl, of striking countenance and most singular 
in her notions and likes. She had a strange 
sympathy with nature in all its moods of varia- 
tion. She was not morbid but hopeful and girl- 
ishly happy. She would talk to the flowers and 
trees as if they were persons and carry on a 
iweirdly intelligent conversation quite beyond 
her years. On cloudless evenings she would 
look up into the sky and call the more promi- 
nent stars by pet names, talking to them as if 
she had once lived there and knew the people 
and places. She would listen to the most in- 
telligent story book and seemingly grasp it all. 
She would entertain company so cleverly as if 
of their own age and at ease on most topics of 
conversation. She had the instinct of reading 
one, interpreting thought by look and tone. 
She did not surprise you, rather she interested 
you. Her language and grace were a delight. 
You made no attempt to get to the level of her 
years, her look and words would not permit 
you had you attempted it. She did not impress 
you as a wonder or even as precocious, she was 
so childish in bearing and spirit. She only 
made you feel that she was singularly gifted 
and affectionate. 

One summer's day after tea, she strolled out 
into the garden with her doll, her inseparable 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 87 

companion, and when search was made for her 
she was not to be found. Of course it created 
an intense excitement in the household, they 
instantly made seasch in every nook and corner 
with lanterns but no Mabel nor trace of her. 
At last and very late her father found her on 
this spot where the arbor now stands, snuggled 
up under a large flowering shrub fast asleep and 
holding her doll. When awakened she said she 
met the u dear little folks" as she always called 
them, and they coaxed her to lie down and 
talked to her and fanned her and made her so 
happy she went fast asleep. Just what she 
meant by it all they never knew, though they 
conjectured, for next day she led her papa and 
mamma out to that shrub and wanted a nice 
little house built there for the "little ones," and 
so they built this arbor and dedicated it to Ma- 
bel's Fairies and it came to be known as "Fairy 
Grotto." Now we are not superstitious in the 
least — alas! so we flatter ourselves — still we 
have a lingering fancy that the dear "little 
ones," the charming elfish Fairies did come to 
her really or in a sweet dream just as the angels 
came to Jacob at Bethel, and have to many 
spirit-sensitive persons burdened and troubled 
and anxious. In memory of the sweet little 
Pet, who saw it built and was made happy so 



88 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

many times in it and who long since passed into 
the real realm of life, we still call it ' 'Fairy 
Grotto." All this would matter little to some, 
but to us there are tenderly clinging memories 
which add perceptibly to our visits and give ex- 
tra relishful pleasures. It is surely a favorite 
resort, and is lived in more than we are willing 
to admit. 

In our arbor, Ruth and I sat one evening 
quietly talking over the day's experiences. It 
had been very warm and our work a little over- 
taxing, but now it was so deliciously cool and 
restful. Side by side, we sat in the open door- 
way, looking out on our garden-world and 
thinking of its many interests, and of our 
friends and loved ones, and on up into the great 
heavens and of our home over there — for the 
distance seems so short between the two worlds 
at such an hour as this. This silence is always 
helpful to us because it is peopled with good 
thoughts. This realm is wholly ours and we 
can admit and debar whom and what we will. 
Too many in such hours leave every gate and 
door open and the meditation is turned into a 
bedlam. Ruth taught me this art of silent con- 
templation. I think it belongs more naturally 
to woman than to man; his is the rougher and 
noisier world and his moods too often are tine- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 89 

tured by the color and character of his world. 
I often find her sitting in the library or before 
the open fire place thinking and planning and 
enjoying. This art of meditation is one of 
life's rarest arts; not brooding, nor castle-build- 
ing, nor drifting idly and aimlessly but rumi- 
nating, calling up what we will of the past, its 
blessings and privileges and purposes, looking 
at them anew and turning them about in 
stronger light and getting from them an extra 
good of inspiration. 

This taking wise outlook and inlook, care- 
fully surveying conditions, solving needed prob- 
lems, as best we can, marking well the great 
headlands that one may know surely the safest 
course of pursuit and just how we may prove 
the most generous almoners of the bounty He 
has given us, — this is that art of meditation so 
much needed in the hurry of the life of to-day. 
For is not to-day's life pitched on a high key, 
is it not over-strenuous and over-insistent, and 
does it not breed discontent and exhaustion? 
Does it grasp and enjoy life's prizes? Nay; it 
is a restless activity, as if activity were all and 
meditation a lost and useless art! Pythagoras 
insisted on an hour of solitude to meet his own 
mind and learn what oracle it had to impart. 



90 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

So is this art worked best alone in a quiet and 
restful silence. 

This Fairy Grotto is so often at the close of 
day our spirits trysting-place. Why, I know- 
not, yet places by virtue of the law of associa- 
tion are oft peculiarly consecrated. Here we 
consciously recognize it. When daylight goes 
slowly and steadily away, and the crimson and 
golden after-glow fade out, and the dull gray 
light settles down as an enwrapping mantel on 
all nature and old earth grows sombre and 
silent, and night coming on to rule in the in- 
terest of rest, then is the hour of thought, the 
triumph and freedom of the spirit, the inter- 
change of heaven and earth, reflection and an- 
ticipation, soul and Oversoul in communion! 
The day came bright and sparkling with splen- 
did opportunities and is gone, its duties are done 
or undone, its records are written, and mem- 
ory, swift-winged, goes over it all and con- 
science emphasizes as it will, and we hear it 
and feel it. There are some remissnesses, but 
so many more pleasures recorded! Our pastor, 
Dr. Archibald, sitting here one evening with a 
group of friends and thoroughly enjoying every 
moment, said, "How beautiful is this arbor 
spot, a sort of re-creating factory for the re- 
newal of jaded bodies and minds." We all felt 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 91 

its refreshing quiet, but he little knew how 
much spiritual uplift he had unconsciously im- 
parted in his evening talk. 

Rest? Yes, we must get it by all means, for 
we live in times when seasons of rest are im- 
peratively demanded — demanded as never be- 
fore. We need rest from the strain of over- 
work that worries and wears and wastes; rest 
from the tyranny of offering just one side of 
ourselves to fashion and society; rest that we 
may offer some new side of ourselves to the 
better kind of life and feel its glow in every 
faculty. Ah ! what fairy palaces we may build, 
says Ruskin, of beautiful thoughts and sweet 
hopes, that shall be proof against all adversity; 
how we may weave together all manner of 
bright fancies, satisfied memories, splendid his- 
tories, noble actions, thoughtful sayings into a 
iine web fit for a king; what treasure houses 
of precious things and inspired thoughts, which 
care cannot disturb nor pain make gloomy, nor 
poverty take from us — houses built without 
hands, beautiful beyond all word picturing, fit 
for souls to live in. How are we reminded of 
"The Chambered Nautilus" by Oliver Wendell 
Holmes : 



92 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life f s unrest' 
ing sea." 

The evening is perfect and the silence capti- 
vating. The whole garden white and silvery 
with most delicious and bewitching moonlight. 
It is the hour and opportunity of the Fairies — 
just the kind of evening and weather they de- 
light in. The noisy avenue feels the spell and 
hushes its harsher sounds, the electrics move 
more quietly with hardly a stop, an occasional 
carriage passes, some belated home-seeker 
steps quickly along, the rattling automobile has 
somehow caught the spirit and glides noiseless- 
ly — the evening dominates and enforces a hal- 
lowed quiet. 

The peering moon is sifting its light so softly 
adown through the oriel branches of elm and 
wistaria, making the exquisitest lawn picturings 
possible, the cricket is chirping lazily and with 
no regularity, as if dozing between his notes, 
the night hawk utters his half suppressed 
"peep" and gives an occasional swoop after 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 93 

prey, the whippoorwill back yonder is toning 
down his voice and giving his song as if he had 
no heart in it, the "Arno" flows so gently on 
and leaps its miniature cascade, bubbling its 
mirth in subdued tones, occasionally some robin 
or sparrow will utter a sweet note as if dream- 
ing of his last vesper joys. Oh! this silence, 
what inspiration it has, our hearts grow glad 
and grateful. It is just the kind of an evening 
that the fairies delight to revel in, so say all the 
bright stories and legends. Somehow we are 
in the fairy mood and susceptible to the impres- 
sion. What! So you believe in fairies? 
Those impossible little elfs? Creations of 
imagination and written about to please the 
child-mind and to brighten a merry page ? Be- 
lieve in them ? Why not ? 

"There are more things in heaven and earth , 
Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in our philosophy ." 

Surely there is no heterodoxy in such a be- 
lief. We fear no ostracism, or loss of social 
caste, and if it were so, we would be with the 
children, and they form the best part of society 
in this world! The fairy-idea is as old as the 
race; it belongs to childhood, it is childhood's 
beautiful and imaginative picturings of possi- 



94 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

bilities in thought and feeling, it is a realization 
of their dreams and longings, their heart is hot 
and their brain is fiery and the overflow is a 
creation, and naturally it is a fairy! What 
mean the old legends and traditionary tales 
coming from a remote past; what of the old- 
time folklore, dating back beyond the childhood 
of our grandfathers and grandmothers, those 
strange and weird tales of giants and fairies 
possessing such charm and power? Every na- 
tion and every age have them. Homer and 
Virgil and all the earlier poets had their naiads 
and oreads and dryads and wood-nymphs and 
mermaids. The old astrologers peopled the 
heavens with gods and goddesses, heroes and 
heroines, and how vividly they are grouped 
there yet; see them about the Pole, Cepheus 
and Cassiopeia and Andromeda and Perseus 
and Pegasus and oh! so many others, and we 
accept it all. 

The "Wandering" minstrel is gone, the 
"Troubadour" has turned to other professions, 
the "Round Table" is crowded with eager chil- 
dren reading the "Arabian Nights," "Mother 
Goose," "Robinson Crusoe" and Andersen and 
Grimm and Lang, and still the clamor is for 
the fairy story. The fairy idea is inworked in 
all literature, ingrained in all art, cropping out 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 95 

in architecture and made practical and real in 
every phase of young life to-day. How capti- 
vating are the children's books and magazines, 
how toothsome and taking the stories, how full 
of nature teaching about flowers and grass and 
trees and bees and birds and sky and clouds. 
How these fairies ever love the garden and the 
edge of the forest and the silvery moonlight. 
How gently and wondrously they disport them- 
selves, how loyal to their king and queen, how 
kind their thoughts, ingenious their devices, 
helpful their ministrations and ever in sympathy 
with the best. Has not the "Christ-Child's" 
coming and the angelic song in mid-heaven 
given shape to thought in sympathy and love 
and is still peopling heaven and earth with 
these charming little people? I always feel 
sorry for the man or woman who stoutly argues 
against fairies and the fairy world. So lack- 
ing in the finer and more delicate perceptions of 
childhood and its best helpers. Happy is he 
who is full of the story element and who, in 
teaching, can people the worlds of his children 
with life and beauty and folks. Nothing can 
be truer than fairy wisdom and nothing kinder 
than fairy ministration. We have told our 
children and grandchildren many a story of 
their prowess and grace and service, and they 



96 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ever clapped hands and plead for more. 

List! there's a gentle rustling of wistaria 
leaves that overarch their arbor, it is the signal 
of their coming. With the speed of Cupids on 
love's intensest mission, they glide in as if on 
moonbeams, perching on chair and table and 
bookcase, resting on head and shoulders, fold- 
ing and opening their wings as a lady toys with 
her fan, so close to us we can see their dainty 
and radiant forms, hear their whisperings and 
gigglings, and feel their touch as one feels the 
sweet breath of the clover field. O so real and 
enchanting, would the children were all here to 
see and sense, and exhilarate nerve and spirit! 
Their royal Queen rises in mid-air with inex- 
pressible sweetness of face and manner, and 
waves her jeweled hand for silence. Instantly 
they are poised and attent. She speaks: 

"My liege Ladies and Lords, I congratulate 
you all gathered in this grotto dedicated to our 
Fairy Race. The time and place of our meet- 
ing is most auspicious and opportune. No ordi- 
nary occasion would have convened so many of 
our elect. The sight is rare and the privilege 
of greeting you is one of exquisite pleasure. 
We come to honor the precious memory of our 
beloved Mabel, one of the sweetest of earth. 
You well remember how she watched for our 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 97 

coming and with what gentleness she ever 
greeted us; we were never more delightfully 
received by any mortal and with her we talked 
as friend talketh with friend. This is the sev- 
enty-fifth anniversary of that sweet May eve- 
ning when we tucked her away under the shrub 
in most hilarious mood and sang and fanned 
her to sleep. 

Beloved Fairies, the evening is ours, the 
moon invites and our joys impel; but let us ever 
remember the fairies' mission to help the help- 
less, sooth the sorrowing, cheer the sick, and 
ever speed on errands of love and service to 
mortals, for so the gods do order. Joy to the 
full in this glad hour. I shall lead the festivi- 
ties to the music of our own chanting. Now, 
Pets, for the lawn and the dance." 

After hearty handclapping and cordial ap- 
proval, they broke into this ringing and swing- 
ing song: 

O happy are we and free 

Happier than birds in air, 
Fresh as winds that blow in the tree, 

With never an anxious care. 

Then away to th! merry lawn 
For our moonlit dance and song; 



98 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

We'll circle the shrub where she lay, 
We'll drink of the floral dew. 
We'll sip of the nectar so sweet, 

This beautiful eve of May. 

There ! Now look and listen, and oh ! the joy 
of it all: 

Soft stealing from the grotto fair 

Come Nympha, like leaves fluttering thro' the 

air. 
Their feet scarce touch the tender blades of 

grass, 
So light and airy is their dance. 

The whole garden is flooded with light from 
the big round moon, causing their gauzy wings 
and garbs to sparkle with every color of the 
rainbow. With shouts of laughter and gleeful 
pranks they form the ring and a jollier crowd 
of midgets never met on earth. O fairy world, 
indeed; beautiful, brilliant fairy folk, never a 
sight so absorbing, so delicious, and so trans- 
porting. Instantly Ruth said with bated breath, 
u O, that Corot could paint that scene, for only 
he could do it! How it reminds me of his 
'Dance of the Nymphs' in that early morn so 
full of enchantment and bewitchery. ,, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 99 

The Fairies seemed to sense that we were 
looking and listening and enjoying, and so they 
frolicked with delightful abandon. They drink 
of the dew, and bathe in it, and bask in the en- 
ravishing moonlight and sip choice nectar from 
the night-blossoming jassamine. There is no 
bickering or quarrelling. 

How fully we enter into it all; we stir not, 
nor scarcely breathe, only a hand pressure now 
and then, to emphasize the keen relish of our 
delight. Our pet Lionel sleeps at our feet with 
one eye open on the fairies, he moves not nor 
even wags his tail, or uplifts his head for his 
coveted pat. He has caught the spirit of si- 
lence and is as bronze. 

O you dear little Elfie fairies, we wonder not 
that the whole child-world opens its eyes wide 
in elated gaze and believes because it feels and 
sees and hears. So late from heaven and fresh 
in spirit and near to nature's heart, what visions 
of exceeding grace they see, what symphonies 
they hear and what teachers of our dullness 
they become by their purer instincts. What a 
dull and cheerless and pulseless world this 
would be without childhood. Children and 
birds and flowers reminded the Master of 
heaven more than aught else. It is the poetic 
spirit that interprets the fairy life, possibly 



loo THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

created it and surely invests it with most engag- 
ing charms. It matters not, they have a world 
and live in it and serve with delight, and so 
have won a place in child-literature and in 
child-love. 

Suddenly other fairies come and beckon to 
their fellows and away they speed, chanting 
some amorous song which I could not catch, 
over beyond the orchard toward the forest's 
edge bound on some errand of good will to 
those sorely needing them. Our hearts are full 
and we slowly move along the gravelled walk, 
enter our room and with hushed and happy 
spirits are soon away in dreamland where the 
unreal seems real and the fancies are heaven- 
hued and the unconscious smile plays and lin- 
gers and sweetens. Treasured are the memo- 
ries of that arbor evening, its bewitching moon- 
light, its fascinating fairies, and the unfading 
lessons of quiet and peace it all gave us ! 



THE OLD ORCHARD, 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE OLD ORCHARD. 

We love the old orchard; it is always full 
of life and interest, summer and winter, day 
and night. So do the birds enjoy it, who most, 
they or we, 'twere hard to tell. They live in 
it for months each year, here they lunch on the 
choicest tid-bits, sing their songs, court their 
mates, build their nests, rear their young, £ght 
their battles and are at the full of happiness. 
What a charming spot it is for the grandchil- 
dren; they fairly own it judging from over- 
heard snatches of talk, they surely boss it — 
but it enterprises them and we are content. 
How they do race Lionel among the trees, 
playing "tag" and "I spy," and strange 
to say the birds are not at all disturbed 
by this extra fun, in fact they seem to 
enjoy it all and oft fly with them. Bettie said 
the other day, after being called three times to 
dinner, as her only apology for being late, "I 
could just live out in that dear old orchard"; 
she was not reprimanded. 

We did not plant the orchard. Dr. Pel- 

103 



104 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ham did more than fifty years ago, and then on 
the very grounds of an older one dating back 
another fifty years. A few of the old, old trees 
remain and fruit a little, but are noted as the 
special homes of the Flickers and Blue Birds 
who easily drill holes for nests. Dr. Pelham 
was a genial gentleman, known far and wide, 
and everybody loved him. Children were his 
favorites. It was the habit of the children for 
miles around to come and see him every Satur- 
day afternoon. What rompings they had, and 
singing and speeches and eating, and the j oiliest 
of them all was the doctor himself. He was a 
man of small stature, of nervous temperament, 
dark eyes and hair, really handsome, and full 
to the brim with effervescing fun; and never 
more happy than on these children's days. 
Among men he was a prince commanding pro- 
foundest respect, and ever foremost in good 
works; a leader in political affairs yet coveting 
no office, active in church life and easily hold- 
ing first place, at home and happy as a public 
speaker, always terse and intense and brief. 
He knew men and delighted in fellowship. But 
with the young people he was their pet and 
pride. He knew young life and was thorough- 
ly in sympathy with it and had not forgotten 
that he was once a boy — so many men do. He 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 105 

entered spiritedly into their play and work and 
study and sorrow, and proved a perpetual in- 
spiration. He helped many a poor boy and 
girl into business or school and on into college. 
Young people consulted him and found in him a 
genuine friend. He knew good apple and pear 
trees, and planted only the best. How exact 
his rows, how judiciously intermingled the dif- 
ferent varieties ; and now in their larger growth 
the branches touch and interlock and fling down 
matted mosaics of sunshine and shadow on the 
rich, well kept turf. 

In classic mythology it was believed that a 
spirit dwelt in every tree — and what tree lover 
would care to doubt it or have it otherwise. Do 
they not dwell there to-day, is there not a per- 
sonality endowing the tree that we prize so 
highly, is it not a joy to touch them and know 
them, and even talk to them? The impersonal 
tree has no force, no attraction, no centrifugal 
action, it is isolated. What a humane family 
of spirits they must be that inhabit an orchard, 
for the apple tree is such a generous and 
friendly tree so fond of birds and folks, so free- 
ly putting forth its finest and fragrantest blos- 
soms, yielding fruit that is so beautiful to the 
sight and rich to the taste and vital to the 
health. There is no tree so valuable to the 



io6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

garden and we wonder not it has been the sub- 
ject of the poets' song and the family's pride. 
Solomon in his Kohaleth accords it high praise : 
"As the Apple Tree among the trees of the 
wood, so is my Beloved among the Sons. I sat 
down under his shadow with great delight and 
his fruit was sweet to my taste." How sug- 
gestive of a wide-spreading apple tree, dense in 
foliage, golden in fruit, standing outside the 
orchard and offering its best to the weary way- 
farer. Such an one I saw in a farming region 
by the roadside the other day and drove under 
it, rested and fed my horse from it, and ate 
freely and gave audible thanks — the tree heard 
and so did the birds and so He Who created 
and gave it. Ruth, apt at quoting, repeated 
Bryant's poem: "Come let us plant the apple 
tree, etc.," and also a bit from that dramatic 
poem "Bitter Sweet," beginning: 



"Hearts like apples are hard and sour, 
Till crushed by Pain's resistless power. 



» 



But the apple tree thrives best in the orchard 
under the touch and care of man. It needs 
training and grafting and enriching. The 
palm tree of the East holds her fruit away up 
out of reach and mocks us; the strawberry is 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 107 

hidden under leaf and close to the earth, nearly- 
all berries are guarded with thorns, but the 
apple greets us with outstretched arms and 
holds her fruit within easy reach or drops it in 
our laps, and what a royal fruit it is, lit product 
of such sweet blossoms. Some of the branches 
hang delightfully low and the children catch 
hold of them and get a real sight and touch and 
taste of the deliciously tempting fruit. There 
is no fruit equal to the apple, it pleases every 
sense, sight and smell, touch and taste. What 
a delicate fragrance comes from its blossoms? 
What choice flavors are in its taste. We do 
not wonder it is the social fruit of New Eng- 
land, in fact of North America, for this is the 
country of the apple orchard, here it is peer- 
less growing as nowhere else and carrying a 
flavor such as no other country can give it. Our 
soil and sun and climate combine to pack it 
with the best. It is surely of the Anglo-Saxon 
heart, loving the cold yet resisting the frost and 
becoming a winter necessity. 

John Burroughs has written so kindly of the 
apple orchard one can hardly escape the tinge 
of his magnetic thoughts — nor those of Tho- 
reau — nor yet those of Henry Ward Beecher. 
I own their influence for a little in this paper. 
Every old New England and Western farm has 



io8 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

its orchard, in many instances the house has 
perished but the orchard lives on. It was a 
necessity and was always early planned and 
planted. It was the sign and symbol of civili- 
zation, it humanized the country. It banished 
the wilderness idea and proclaimed the home. 
The very ground of an old orchard seems to 
be nearer and dearer to men than any adjoining 
field — as if in some way the old fruit-bearing 
trees had touched the spot into a genial deli- 
cacy, altogether human. There is something 
deep and rich of heart in the sight of one of 
these homestead orchards that has in it yet a 
few old maternal apple trees that have lived 
on through decades of summers and winters, 
through countless storms and frosts, and some- 
how have made the very atmosphere all about 
them sweeter than elsewhere ; then, too, through 
all these countless summers have nourished 
robins and sparrows and wrens and finches and 
bluebirds and woodpeckers so that they have a 
tender, brooding look — maternal trees indeed! 
The orchard has its clustering memories as 
well as the house. It always seemed to us in 
our boyhood like the outlying part of the house. 
We were daily in it, climbing its trees, ate its 
fruit, read our books up in its branches, talked 
our plans and plays — and now the sight of one 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS iog 

recalls the tenderest and sweetest memories of 
days and years so full of sunshine and life, it 
seems they must have been lived on some other 
planet. The bird crop was no small item in 
our summer's count. There was surely a nest 
in every tree, and how eagerly we watched the 
building processes, occasionally caught glimpses 
of eggs and birdlings and through it all re- 
spected the bird and its nest, for so Mother 
taught us. There were Robins and Orioles, 
Blue and Yellow birds, Chickadees and War- 
blers and Humming birds, and they sang just as 
sweetly and courted as elegantly then as now; 
we did not know all of their names and haunts 
as we do now; no matter, we loved them and 
they knew it. But here in our orchard we have 
all of these birds, and more, and a happy family 
it is, there is so little quarreling, occasionally a 
bit of scrapping, but that only adds zest to the 
songs of gladness that come afterwards. 

The best place for bird study is in the 
orchard, here they feed and sing and mate and 
nest, and are at home. Most of the one hun- 
dred and fifty birds that inhabit this region are 
sure to visit our orchard during the season. It 
is evidently a favorite bird resort. They know 
that cats are forbidden the premises, for they 
are treacherous. Lionel is the police to en- 



i io THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

force this rule, a sport which he enjoys. Young 
trees may be best for apples, but old trees are 
l>est for birds. There are more insects and 
larvae and eggs in the old trees — just the choice 
and appetizing tid-bits that the average bird 
covets, and because he finds them he chirps and 
sings the more for gratitude. There is an- 
other reason why our orchard is a bird center. 
Ruth feeds them every morning at eight o'clock, 
and they come flocking in at that hour like the 
pigeons at Venice. I think this is her happiest 
hour. Certainly the birds enjoy it, oft taking 
the food out of her hand. She will allow no 
one to move while feeding; talking and laugh- 
ing do not disturb them, but moving does. Then 
after feeding comes an improvised concert and 
who can report it? That little nervous but 
happy wren is the first to lead off in song, and 
the spirit is quickly contagious and what a 
treat! 

Out here is the hammock paradise, no place 
its equal for our friends as well as our children. 
On Monday afternoon a coterie of social and 
literary friends, artists, teachers, our pastor 
and doctor, a judge of the Superior Court, a 
retired sea captain, their wives and some very 
dear neighbors, are apt to center out here rather 
than in the library. It is a sort of Monday 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS in 

club without any organization or by-laws or 
fees; they come because they enjoy it and are 
free to bring a friend. Here under this apple 
tree canopy what visits and talks and yarns 
and discussions and readings; what theories 
propounded, what projects planned, what cas- 
tles built, what rectifications of political and 
social ills advanced; then questions of art and 
science, theology and law and medicine, gov- 
ernment and progress, books and authors, and 
all the leading events of the day, and for them 
all what wise discussions and wiser decisions! 
It is an unwritten law in these gatherings that 
nothing hurtful to any one's interest shall be 
discussed, no gossip allowed, only the best 
thoughts and the kindest criticisms and the 
truest things. It is this kindly spirit and de- 
lightful freedom that make our Monday club 
a most profitable gathering and so homelike. 

Robert Louis Stevenson puts his thought vig- 
orously: 



<< 



There's so much bad in the best of us, 
And so much good in the worst of us, 
That it scarcely behooves any of us 
To talk about the rest of us." 



What a restful spot this orchard; if there is 



ii2 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

anything more dreamily romantic than resting 
in a hammock in perfect weather conditions, it 
would be worth a good deal to experience it. 
The quiet, the balmy air, the green canopy, 
patches of blue sky, the friendly birds, the half 
shut book and the visions of imagination hazily 
vanishing far away, the cooling breezes com- 
ing up from the sea and passing over into the 
woods yonder of oak and pine: — O how deli- 
cious it all is, for nature everywhere this balmy 
essence breathes. How it fondles you with its 
soft caressing touch, and you lean your cheek 
against it as if it were velvet. Every sense 
is regaled; those indefinable odors surely come 
from some invisible spice islands and swing- 
ing but lightly one's very being is enwrapped 
in the perfection of physical luxury. In this 
half heavenly state I am as one dreaming, the 
music of the birds is enchanting me, solos and 
duets, choruses as from a full choir and trained 
orchestra, making the air tremulous and jubi- 
lant with exquisite melody. Listen to that Song 
Sparrow; he does know how to pour out his 
very soul in song, and just how much to give. 
His song has remarkable variations and 
equalled by no other bird. He has seven of 
these variations distinctly recognizable; sings 
one of them over and over a score of times, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 113 

drops it and takes up another and so on 
through all the seven. But when he sings you 
are sure that life is worth living, and that this 
world is worth living in. What a charming 
note that "tschip" is, the tone of it is a rich 
contralto. His ordinary song consists of one 
high note repeated three times and a rapid 
run down the scale and back again, but oh! 
it is so sweet. 

Here at my left in the still thickets close by 
the brook lives our Wood Thrush. He is a 
welcome resident of our garden. There is no 
bird whose bearing is more distinguished, or 
whose songs are more spiritual. He always ap- 
peals to our higher nature and stirs our emo- 
tions. He is a lovable bird and his voice is 
suited to his disposition. His calm, restful song 
rings through the woods like a hymn of praise. 
That flute-like "Come to Me," which he 
so often sings, is the perfection of tenderness. 
It is an invitation into his sylvan haunts to 
share the quiet, uplifting influence of the forest. 
His song is quite disconnected, broken by short 
pauses and by low notes of exceeding sweetness 
audible only when one is near the singer. But 
his magic song-phrase seems always at his beak- 
tip. What a happy bird he must be for his 
song is one sweet outburst of bliss. He knew 



ii4 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

we were listening and so we gently applauded 
and he ruffled his feathers appreciatingly. 

Just note that Cat-bird, how trim and neat 
and dainty of figure and dress. How nimble 
and graceful, as he hops from branch to branch. 
What a splendidly built bird and what a pat- 
tern of symmetry as an art study. He is beau- 
ty itself, so exquisite his finish, so rhythmic his 
motion. His peculiar pale blue color is without 
an equal among the birds of our New England. 
His black cap and touch of black in tail set 
him off artistically. It is unfortunate for him 
that he is named from his "call" rather than 
from his beauty and song. His "cat-call" is 
very disagreeable but his song from a musical 
standpoint is excelled by few birds. The voice 
is full and rich and the execution fauldess. 
High trees are unsocial and he is rarely in 
them; he is a social bird and very chatty, a 
Bohemian, and he croons in the lilacs and 
syringas and alders, in fact, in any shrub that 
suits his convenience only so be that he is near 
folks. He enjoys hearing himself talk and 
thinks everybody else does, and being first 
cousin to the southern mocking-bird may ac- 
count for his replicating vocal power. His 
cousin is an artist but he a wag, a caricaturist 
and certainly very clever, when he can imitate 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 115 

Wilson's Thrush and deceive the elect; he will 
make you think he is a robin or some bird new 
to science and you listen peering into the bushes 
and out will come his inevitable cat-call and 
you are disgusted and he chuckles over his de- 
ception. 

The Hermit Thrush is a rara avis. So few 
know him, and fewer have heard him and 
still fewer have ever seen him. He is a shy 
bird and rightly named. I have seen and heard 
him at his best and it was finer than any orches- 
tra. Nothing in sounds is quite comparable to 
it; the song must be heard to know it. It is a 
wild, wierd, elusive, witching song. It is like 
and yet unlike the best bird singing. It was a 
wonderful succession of clear, soft, liquid notes 
floating through the very spirit of the forest 
with a certain pathetic melody that touches the 
heart like soft musical chords; but it is so ap- 
pealing. I have heard him when the musician 
himself was invisible and as etherial as his 
magic song. Once in a warm July day I was 
idly resting just in the edge of the woods on 
a soft bed of ferns and moss. I was nearly 
asleep, when suddenly right before me was the 
little brown Hermit of the Woods on a branch 
pouring forth his matchless song, unconscious 
of any listener save his petted mate. His head 



n6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

was thrown back, his arrow-spotted throat 
thrust forward and quivering with emotion, 
wings slightly drooping and his feet keeping 
time. O that rolling, rollicking, rippling melo- 
dy, so sweet and plaintive and beautiful and 
penetrating. I seemed as one transported, my 
very soul glowed in ecstasy as if it had heard 
angelic songs. I must have stirred, for he fled 
but I could not rise, the charming spell was up- 
on me. And how it lives to this day so sacredly 
sweet ! 

Our garden-world is a daily wonder and 
grows more wonderful. There is so much life 
in it that hourly we discover new beauties and 
hear new sounds and sniff new fragrances. 
Every faculty is alert for new experiences. New 
birds come and alight and sing, and each note 
is a wonder and each strain a mystery. Oft- 
times their love-lyrics are wild and mastering, 
throbbing with more than Sapphic intensity 
and abandon. Were I but gifted with the very 
genius of fine writing, so that what I know 
about birds and their happy lives could by some 
magic, all its own, eke out of my pen, what a bit 
of charming and poetic, and withal truthful 
writing I could put in these pages. But alas! 
so great is the distance between their ravishing 
song, their graceful ways on wing and branch, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 117 

and my wording of it all, the very attempt 
is disheartening and I unconsciously lose the 
keen edge of my joy. One cannot transcribe 
life's richest ecstasies, to formulate them is to 
mar them. Yet they are felt; and experience 
is, after all, the touchstone of life. 



ART AND PICTURES, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ART AND PICTURES. 

We are art lovers, not artists, yet possessed 
of the artist spirit, and because of it have gath- 
ered a valuable art library and many fine pic- 
tures. It is the one home luxury and dominates 
the right of way. Pets are so apt to do it. But 
its real value to us is a perpetual inspiration 
to see and feel appreciatingly the best things of 
life. It is of daily use and has gradually edu- 
cated our vision, clarified our tastes, trained 
our judgments, multiplied our sources of joy 
and enhanced the ministry of Beauty in every 
possible way. We do not indulge in the cost- 
liest oils and water colors, conditions forbid. 
We are ever on the watch at picture stores and 
take advantage of the markets. Our friends 
wonder but our walls are decorated and our 
portfolios grow weighty. We often have pic- 
ture evenings, usually the stormy ones. We 
turn on the light and revel in art vision and feed 
on beauty, studying form and technique, color 
and tone, quality and personality, and com- 
paring artists' earlier and later work, and their 

121 



J22 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

best with the best of other artists. There is 
untold value in this for it cultivates ideals and 
ideals become the standards of life. These 
ideals stand in similar relation to interior home 
decoration that sculpture does to architectural 
designs, it is ornament with purpose and this 
is always good art. 

The theory of "Art for Art's sake," when 
rightly understood, carries with it the highest 
inspiration. It involves the sublimities of pur- 
pose and the deep determinations of years. It 
works ever toward the highest and creates the 
best. The real artist is ever larger than his 
studio and greater than his work. He belongs 
to the race and had his enriching gifts for serv- 
ing his age. He cannot live for himself and 
succeed. Personal gratification is the death of 
art. Nor money, nor fame can operate the 
artist's faculties to the full, only the artist-love 
can command the artist-genius. The old "Bar- 
bizon School" is forever the illustration and 
enforcement of this theory and principle. What 
works they wrought, not for money or fame, 
(for most of them had little or none of either, 
but because the artist-genius that possessed 
them compelled them on and ever on to the 
very end of life. They painted because they 
loved it better than life — painted because they 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 123 

must and could, and gloried in it and waited 
patiently for the world's tardy appreciation. 
Their works command the market to-day and 
demand the prizes. It was Art for Art's sake ! 
The artist accomplishes his mission when 
he communicates himself. His personality is 
his power. The ultimate effect of all art is 
spiritual. He who out of his complex world 
brings in a new harmony is an artist. The 
supreme life of which everything partakes is 
beauty. Each artist interprets the world of 
beauty as he sees it and feels it. No two see 
it alike. True individuality is originality, orig- 
inality is power, and power is the artist's covet- 
able prize. He would have it at the tip of his 
brush, but he must have it in heart and brain 
first. Art must feel before it can speak. But 
power is a costly quality and demands all in 
exchange; many can't afford it and are only 
fractional artists and poverty-struck at that; 
others with a mastering hunger of heart for 
highest ideals, give and give and work and win 
the goal ! 

The real heart artist knows so much more 
about nature than the most accurate draughts- 
man, and is ever sacrificing literal accuracy in 
composition. He takes out of nature what 
he will and where he will and groups it to suit 



124 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the pressing need. He idealizes form, empha- 
sizes lines, concentrates light and shade and 
color as it pleases him. He appreciates values 
and relates them and accentuates them. Color 
and effect are often greatly scattered in nature, 
that is nothing, for the whole world of color 
and beauty is at the artist's disposal and he 
well knows that color is his highest quality in 
painting. By it are suggested lines and lights 
and shadows and perspective and atmosphere — 
everything. And just here is the power of his 
individuality. In music harmony is the final 
word — color-harmony is the consummation of 
best art. For art is the world as seen by the 
artist. The artist is everything in art. We do 
not look for photographic fidelity, we do not 
want it, we want the artist. He must see all 
there is to see and feel deepest soul-stirrings 
and he must create and beautify his ideals. An 
old Greek poet says, 

"/ seek what's to be sought 
I learn what's to be taught, 
I beg the rest of Heaven." 

Individuality in art, as in everything else, is 
its power and glory. Some art scholar has 
written, "Art to Phidias was a matter of form, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 125 

but how matchless that form ; to Titian a mat- 
ter of color, but how exquisite that coloring; 
to Corot a matter of feeling, but how deep and 
strong that tide of feeling; and yet each artist 
was an individual genius. To Michael Angelo 
a woman's face was nothing if not thoughtful, 
to Raphael nothing if not beautiful, to Cor- 
reggio nothing if not animated with life, to Fra 
Angelico nothing if not angelic — and yet each 
was a genius. Homer conceived existence he- 
roically, Dante ecclesiastically, Milton reli- 
giously, Shakespeare dramatically, Byron felt 
its misanthropic side, Scott its romantic, Balzac 
its realistic, Dumas its facetious phases — and 
each in himself was a genius." 

The art work of the world is like open win- 
dows and rooms through which we look and 
and enter into worlds of beauty and into the 
larger life of the past. Here the long-buried 
secrets of old Egypt reveal themselves, here 
are the wonderful arts of classic Greece, here 
are the laws and powers of Rome and here the 
rich and storied lore of the Middle Age. Beau- 
ty of every sort and from every age will speak 
to us most appealingly and hearts will thrill 
under the consciousness of the world's spiritual 
realities. Then shall come the important les- 
son so much needed that Beauty is ever one 



126 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and flows from the great heart of God in 
love and truth, and that the great spiritualities 
of all times have responded to that ever flowing 
symphony and because of it have written its 
thoughts and we call it literature, have scaled 
its notes and we call it music, have gathered 
facts and we call it science, have pencilled lines 
and waves of light and we call it art, have had 
deep insight into things and experiences and 
we call it philosophy, have thrilled our inmost 
hearts with divine messages and we call it reli- 
gion. 

Beauty is not the end of art any more than 
knowledge is the end of study or money the 
end of business or happiness the end of reli- 
gion. The object of all art study and art work 
is to increase the sum total of life, not only its 
comforts and happiness but its larger useful- 
ness. Whatever will aid one in doing the ordi- 
nary or extraordinary work of life easier and 
happier and better is worth the while. It is 
the very best of investments — pays its thirty 
and sixty and hundred-fold. Beautiful things 
and beautiful environments are among the 
choicest appointments of our busy and too often 
over-burdened life. It is forever true that 
everything means something. Beautify it and 
it will have a richer significance and a sweeter 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 127 

inspiration. "Talent for any art is rare, but 
it is given to all to cultivate a taste for art. 
The more things one learns to know and enjoy 
the more complete and rich will be the joy of 
living." So it is we cultivate art and daily 
reap some of life's best things. Art in all its 
forms, as expressed through the eye or ear 
to the very soul of man, has contributed more 
to social well-being than any other one force. 
It has made the plain beautiful; it has trans- 
formed nature into something more than na- 
ture. 

I am sure you can see why we love pic- 
tures. They are educators. Their educating 
power is greater than we are wont to concede. 
Silently but none the less really do they impress 
us. The eye is a marvellous instrument, and it 
seldom forgets. It is more accurate than the 
ear. A family of four boys, raised far back in 
the country, ran away to sea, one after another, 
before they came of age. The mother was 
lamenting this to a friend, who noticed a beau- 
tiful steel engraving of a full-rigged ship, plow- 
ing the waters, a thing of life and beauty. It 
was a very attractive picture and had hung over 
the mantle during all the childhood of the boys. 

There is little danger of paying too much 
attention to the various details of home adorn- 



128 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ment, especially in the matter of pictures. Peo- 
ple who have very clear ideas concerning good 
taste and good morals too often ignore both in 
the choice of paintings or engravings to hang 
upon their walls. Important as is the selection 
of great books for family reading it is not 
less important to choose pictures that shall be 
Suggestive and stimulating. Where the eye falls 
once upon the pages of a book from the library, 
it looks upon a picture from the walls scores 
of times. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the great 
English painter, giving advice to young artists, 
said: "Were I you, I would not allow my eye 
to become familiarized with any but the highest 
forms of art. If you cannot afford to have any 
good oil paintings, get good engravings of 
great pictures; get the best photographic re- 
productions of the foremost artists. Get sam- 
ples of the best art work, or hang nothing on 
your walls." This advice is as sensible for the 
family as for the artist. The whole relation 
of art to ethics has rarely been more clearly 
and concisely given than in this bit of terse ad- 
vice. Art is not a plaything; it's not for diver- 
sion; it is not an occupation merely; but is 
wholly practical, entering into all life and 
touching with a sort of magic power everything 
about us. The more things we know about art 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 129 

the greater will be our delight in living, for 
true art touches everything in our lives and 
enhances its beauty and worth. A beautiful 
picture is a great truth, and thus art is often a 
divine message. Now while there are many 
messengers to convey the truth to human minds 
and hearts, beauty is ever the favored one. 
Keats wrote deeper than he knew when he said, 

"Beauty is Truth; Truth Beauty; 
That is all ye know on earth, 
And all ye need to know." 

It becomes then a question of quite serious 
nature what shall be the character of the pic- 
tures hung on our home walls. Not every pic- 
ture is worthy a place on the home walls, no 
more than is every person worthy a place in 
our home circle as an intimate or associate. A 
picture that is to look you in the face at all 
hours of day or night, is, after all, somewhat 
of an item in your existence. It is taking to 
yourself a silent companion, and though there 
is no speech, nor language, nor is its voice 
heard, yet its lines go out into your daily life 
and its words to the end of your day's. A pic- 
ture is as a friend; a friend must have character 
and power. Hence, pictures are an essential 
accessory to every home that lays claim to be a 



130 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

haven of rest and enjoyment; for they do rest 
the eye, they do relax the long-strung tension 
of nervous energy, they do afford a sweet, 
soothing enjoyment. We may not always sense 
it, but try bare walls, when physically and men- 
tally jaded, and note the effect. 

Happy that home that has artistic taste equal 
to the selection and arranging of such pictures 
as "that daily viewed, please daily and whose 
charm outlasts the flight of years." A room 
with pictures in it and a room without pictures 
differ by nearly as much as a room with or 
without windows. Nothing, we think, is more 
melancholy, particularly to a person who has 
to spend much time in his room, than bare, 
blank walls. Pictures are loopholes of escape 
to the soul, leading it out into other and joy- 
ous spheres. It is such an inexpressible belief 
to a person engaged in writing or reading or 
any confining indoor work, on looking up, not 
to have his line of vision chopped squarely off 
by dull and odious white walls, but find his soul 
escaping through the frame of an exquisite pic- 
ture, to other beautiful and perhaps idyllic 
scenes where the fancy may revel for a moment 
delighted and refreshed. 

Is it winter in your world? Perhaps it is 
summer in the picture. It may be dull and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 131 

cheerless out of doors, but the picture opens up 
a world of sunshine and gladness. Are you 
heavy-hearted? There before you is a picture 
full of tranquility and beauty, or possibly a 
portrait of a remembered loved one whose 
very soul looks at you so kindly and scatters 
at once your clouds and banishes your sorrows 
and inspires new courage. What a charming 
momentary change and contrast ! 

Thus pictures are consolers of one's loneli- 
ness; they are sweet flattery to the soul, a re- 
lief to the overtaxed mind; they are windows 
to the imprisoned thought, they are books writ- 
ten full of life's suggestive ideas ; they are his- 
tories and biographies and romances which can 
be read without turning leaves. So it is beauti- 
ful pictures in a home educate and refine and 
confer lifelong pleasures. We never tire of 
them. Seen at different hours and under dif- 
ferent light, they vary as a landscape and seem 
to have varying messages but the message is 
always pleasing and profitable. 

A beautiful picture is a revelation ; it awakens 
thought, enforces observation and compels the 
study of correspondences and relations. What- 
ever widens the mental horizon, stimulates in- 
quiry, excites comparison or in any way helps 
on toward the good, the beautiful and the true, 



i 3 2 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

is a blessing to the individual, the home and 
the world. Therefore do we love art and in- 
dulge in the very best copies of the best pic- 
tures. 



BIRD LIFE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BIRD LIFE. 

A Bird Paradise is our garden. I don't 
wonder for it is a Paradise to us, and Paradise 
without birds would hardly be spelled with a 
capital P. Here is just what they want, food 
and water, shade and shelter, lawn and tree, 
and above all protection. We permit no one 
to approach the nest while the mother bird is 
on it or near it. Cats not allowed on the 
premises. Lionel knows this and they know it. 
Our birds fly about him, feed at his side, and 
sing in the bushes just above him. We hail the 
birds and give them fruit and shelter for their 
songs. What music they give from early morn 
till dewy eve! Often our visitors say "why 
don't you protect your cherries?" And Ruth 
is very quick to answer, "they are the wages 
of our orchestra." Somehow the birds seem to 
hear and know it all and make another dash, 
capturing the reddest and plumpest cherries 
and fly into a neighboring tree and eat with a 
twittering relish and then comes a ravishing 
song in whole or in fragments. "There, don't 

135 



136 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

that pay ?" Pay? Yes ! a hundred fold. Some 
flavor of Eden floats daily adown into our Gar- 
den of Dreams, floats in on the rays of golden 
sunlight and on the silvery moon-beams the 
livelong night through. One's garden means 
much or little as one thinks it and works it; if 
you love it, you will think it and work it and 
lo! your Eden — with the serpent story left 
out — abounding in fruits and flowers, sunshine 
and waves of balmy air, pouring forth endless 
tides of life and beauty, fairly overflowing into 
all the neighborhood and carrying an extra joy. 

May is a sort of neutral ground between 
winter and summer. The first part of it is the 
season of uncertainties, it has all the moods and 
tenses that we attribute to April. After the 
tenth she quits her coquetry and gets ready 
for genial June. Then she is busy putting on 
her drapery, packing flowers with sweetness 
and beauty, and proffering her best to the birds. 
She feels her power and touches everything and 
everything responds, life abounds and puts on 
more life, all nature is crowded and activity 
grows intense. She produces yellow flowers as 
April did white, dandelions bejewel the lawns, 
out of the lush meadows rise great tufts of 
golden mustard, the yellow violet modestly 
shoots from grassy mounds as if in haste to 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 137 

come out into a world of beauty, yellow daisies 
and buttercups and marsh marigolds and ever 
so many others fill the pastures and meadows. 
A luxury indeed to close shop for a day and 
open eyes and ears and heart and drink in of 
nature to the full until every sense feels the 
delight of freshness and sweetness. How beau- 
tiful the trees in their new and rich foliage, how 
sweet the grass and flowers, full even to over- 
flow are the birds, with their spring joy. Pertly 
enough to provoke a smile is the little Chewink, 
who querulously hops about and would know 
our errand if near her nest. Airily floats the 
Blue Bird, adding a gleaming color against 
the green leafage of the woods, so unique in 
dress and dainty in song and act. The Scarlet 
Tanager dashes by us as if on some church 
errand, but really only after an extra tid-bit 
for his lunch. The Rose Breasted Grosbeak, 
modest and shy, and swift of wing, ranking with 
the Oriole and Tanager for beauty, occasion- 
ally giving us parts of his song in a flowing 
warble, a little like the Robin's but more fluent 
and delicious; a joy to us that he nests in our 
orchard and is so contented and good. 

May tenth was an ideal bird day and our 
garden proved a perfect rendezvous for all the 



138 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

feathered tribe. What a variety, what a flut- 
tering and chattering, singing and scolding and 
scrapping. I was out at day-break but nature 
was all awake and astir, the whole bird family 
seemed unusually awing and songful. A half- 
dozen Red Breasts were on the lawn voracious 
and vociferous. The Sparrows and Thrushes 
were just wild with sweetest songs, the Oriole 
was on the topmost twigs, the Cat-Bird down 
in the low bushes, the Flickers racing up and 
down and dodging around the apple-tree trunks, 
Yellow birds in wavy flight, circled about glee- 
ful in song; over in the pasture Blue Jay and 
Crow scolded or sung in raucus tones as it 
pleases you to interpret; everywhere every bird 
was at his best of wind and song, as if by 
appointment it were a "bird field day." Hun- 
dreds of them concentred in our garden. Ruth 
heard the racket and motherlike roused the 
grandchildren, and out they came, half-dressed, 
with a rush and shout but it only added joy to 
the hour. This convention lasted for three 
hours and almost on a concerted signal the 
visitors fled and our own birds extraly fed 
sought shelter and courted and mated. 

Never is bird-life so interesting as in the 
spring-mating and honeymoon. How coy and 
artful and bewitching their ways. What utter 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 139 

abandon of life after mateship. How eager 
their search for a fit nest place. How deferen- 
tial to her wishes. She is finding the place and 
he by pranks and songs expresses supreme 
pleasure in her wisdom and skill, as the best 
little wife that song-bird ever had. May is such 
a short month, it always seems but half a 
month, so interested are we in the birds and 
flowers and the beautiful out-of-doors life. If 
we could but add two weeks to it — taking them 
off from cheerless February. There is so much 
to see and do. The birds have all come and 
are at their best. Some come in March and 
some in April, some stay the year through but 
May is the bird month and all too short. My 
literary work always suffers in this month. 
Meals are irregular, the garden and orchard 
and pasture and the "hill over there" have first 
claim, all because of the birds. I have my pet 
birds and the children have theirs; they often 
argue with me about their pets and if alone and 
afield, rather than have an argument I always 
side with them, but in the house I stick stub- 
bornly to my own pets. It puzzles them but it 
ornaments and punctuates the day and adds 
interest. 

Did you hear that most exquisite strain from 



140 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the Song Sparrow? How it always charms me, 
have heard it from my boyhood, it never loses 
key nor fails of a delicious intoxication. Pre- 
cious as it is, I have never found an adjective 
quite good enough for that bit of thrilling 
music. True of him as of every real artist, he 
is in love with his part. How consciously and 
daintily he flutters about. It is real music just 
to watch him. He says with such inimitable 
graces, "Don't you want to hear me sing?" — 
and whether you will or no, with uplifted head 
out comes his cheeriest melody and you are so 
glad, gladder than you can tell. He sings as 
one possessed, fairly beside himself with strong 
passion. But it is always a joyous song, no 
matter what the hour or weather. He sings 
out of the joy of his heart. He welcomes the 
dawn and the sunrise, he welcomes every hour, 
high noon and sunset and deepening night shad- 
ows, shady days and rainy days, from morning 
to evening he is happy and busy. No bird sings 
so often and so much and so entrancingly ; he 
knows how and does it all so royally. He is a 
lover of old fields and weedy old lichen-covered 
rail fences, old cattle paths where the grass 
is the sweetest, weedy banks of sluggish brooks 
that wind indolently among mossy boulders 
and tangled thickets, in our garden he loiters 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 141 

about the current and raspberry bushes, he de- 
lights in taking short and frequent riotous baths 
in the Arno and immediately flies to the tops of 
trees to dress his plumage and between dressing 
acts, delightfully pours forth crystal song that 
fairly glistens. 

Some one writes about his singing, "He 
starts off with a few low, rattling notes, makes 
a quick leap to a high strain, ascends through 
many a melodious variation to the key note 
and suddenly stops, leaving his song to sing 
itself through in your brain." 

Another said he seems to say, "Press-press- 
press-by-tee-rian-ian!" The fact is you can 
read most anything into his song but the song 
itself is inexpressible. His voice is a clear 
tenor and he uses it with great culture and 
power. 

There is a special one in our garden and 
this seems to be his song, "Swe-et, swe-et, sweet 
and bitter swe-et," and then repeats it with deli- 
cate variations as if in love with its rich tones. 
He certainly tosses it off in a most jaunty man- 
ner as if there was really no "bitter" in his 
life. Several times I have heard him sing lusti- 
ly on the wing, while dropping from a high 
tree-top. His nest is down by the Arno, veiy 



142 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

neat and in its way a model. My garden 
would lose one of its best attractions if my 
Song Sparrow would leave it; he will not, I am 
sure, because I pet him and he appreciates it. 

I wish everybody knew the Goldfinch or Yel- 
low bird. He is such a happy fellow, his gen- 
tle ways and sweet disposition are splendid 
antidotes for despondency and discontent. One 
cannot watch a flock of these birds without an 
impression of their personal refinement and 
decorous behavior in each other's presence. 
They are never rough and never fight. They 
are so contented, and their song is so sweet and 
rich in tone and tender in quality; "Hear me — 
Hear me-dearie," is their call to each other as 
they feed so quietly among weeds and thistles 
and birch buds and dandelions and sunflowers. 
No matter how poor the picking, they are hap- 
py. The meal finished, and away they dash 
into the air, merrily and softly singing their 
"per-chic-o-ree, per-chic-o-ree." What a grace- 
ful, undulating swing in their flight, so har- 
monious and billowy. The sight is always beau- 
tiful. They go in small flocks, having no 
leader, often intermingling with similar flocks. 
They are the happiest bird hereabouts, and 
are always welcome. There is a goodly flock 
of thirty that come into our garden twice a day. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 143 

They come from the same direction each time, 
find a toothsome lunch and partake daintily; 
tarry long they will not and are soon a-wing 
with their cheery "thank you, sir." All through 
May they are too happy to think of home and 
its cares, they only eat and fly and sing and 
sleep. About the middle of June they mate 
and nest, and raise at least two broods. 

The Yellow bird is a warbler, but this is a 
family name, like swallow or sparrow, and does 
not imply that they are fine singers; in fact, 
most of them are not; their voices are thin and 
sharp, and there is a short, quick measure with 
little of the smoothness that the word warbler 
would lead us to expect. The Goldfinch is 
seen by more people than any member of the 
yellow family. They are not fond of the woods, 
the old, open and weedy pastures and roadsides 
and along old rail fences, where grows the 
mullein and thistle and asters and tall stalky 
weeds, this is their paradise. The study of 
the warblers, is at once delightful and exasper- 
ating, fatiguing and satisfying: — exasperating 
because they skip away so quickly to another 
tree or field warbling most enchantingly on the 
way; and delightful because of their gayety and 
song variety and beauty of coloring and jaunty 
elegance of form. They have the happy facul- 



144 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ty of raising and lowering tones in such capti- 
vating cadences that their music seems at times 
to float in air scarcely louder than the hum- 
ming of bees and then again it swells into a 
vigorous crescendo which rings out like the 
canary's splendid song; at such times he seems 
to pour it from two or three slivery throats all 
at once ! 

The Bobolink is thoroughly American; he 
has no European type; in fact, no near rela- 
tives anywhere. He is sui generis. Certainly 
unique in his hilarity and delightful in endless 
musical variations. He is a songster of un- 
equalled richness. The Mockingbird, so apt in 
imitation of other singers, never attempts a 
parody of Robert o' Lincoln's rollicking melo- 
dies. Either he disdains or can't. The Bobo- 
link's every note is a gleeful self-satisfaction. 
He has such exuberant bird pride. Such vanity, 
such dainty airs, surely he is the coxcomb of 
the meadows. Yes, yes; but he is a universal 
favorite. Everybody goes afield in July to see 
and hear him — and the seeing and hearing is 
marked as a red letter day experience. 

The great poets vie to write him up in best 
and most jingling poetry. His literary fame is 
secure, and it may be in literature he is the suc- 
cessful competitor. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 145 

He is markedly gallant toward every female 
of his order that chances along, even though 
mating-time is over. If he gets jilted, as he 
surely does and ought, he breaks out into a per- 
fect jubilation of roistering good feeling, sing- 
ing his lustiest, "See, see, see, I must have some 
fun, Miss Bobolink, spink, spink, the meadow 
is mine, and all that fly, so I chase thee, see, see, 
see — bobolink, spink, spink." 

After mating, Mrs. Robert is utterly indif- 
ferent to his music and the display of his 
plumage. In fact, this is so with every female 
bird, so far as I know, they seem disgusted with 
his birdships majestic song and fine feathers. 
Is it possible that nine-tenths of all his song 
and plumage display is purely his own vanity 
in attempting to outsing and outshine all 
others ? It matters not — he does it. 

Our orchard is always attractive to visitors. 
The nature and art-loving seek it as by instinct. 
The trees are full green and branches oft inter- 
lock, in places the canopy of shade is complete, 
and who can describe the pictures as you look 
up through branches to the wondrous sky be- 
yond or to the shadows that play about you on 
the bright sward. Here are lounging conven- 
iences, easy chairs and hammocks galore. A 
special delight is that the birds are so tame, 



146 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

keeping happily on with their nesting and car- 
ing for the young as if none were present. 
These April and May days of shower and sun- 
shine bring us into the orchard, and eagerly we 
watch the first red buds and blossoms. There 
is nothing in nature that excels an apple-tree in 
full bloom! Along the fence of our orchard 
are raspberry and blackberry bushes intermin- 
gled with currants and gooseberies — a mighty 
nice hiding place for chipmunks, and shady 
haunts for ground-loving birds, and rich feed- 
ing places. Here revel the various sparrows 
and chickadees and cat-birds and thrushes, etc. ; 
feathers abound here, evidences of scraps. 
Apple-trees always attract flies and bugs and 
bees, and all larvae-depositing insects, and are 
the very best hunting ground. A bird's daily 
existence is a bewitching mystery. How active 
in search of food and watchful of a possible 
enemy. How graceful every move and grate- 
ful for every find. Our visitors are often 
charmed into utter forgetfulness of the subject 
under discussion — but vision is intense, putting 
in its best work. 

The shrubs and flowers look very charming 
over yonder in the garden bearing just a dream 
of sunset glory on their edges, and emitting an 
Edenic perfume, kindling indescribable emo- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 147 

tions. Have you ever really heard the Chipping 
Sparrow sing? I do not refer to his ordinary 
"chippy, chippy," which is dull and tiresome. 
But yesterday morning at dawn I lay half 
awake and in the branches of a cherry tree 
that comes close to our window, I heard that 
soft insect-chirp so melodious and baby-like, as 
if he must breathe it out and yet would not 
waken me. Oh! it was just a luxury of spirit 
to lie and listen and feel the whole summer in 
that song. I could hardly believe it was 
"Chippy," but it was his morning song to 
awaken his mate, and I overheard it. Here is 
that Wood Pewee, the expert fly-catcher, a 
perfect marvel on the wing, whose nest, for all 
the world looking like an old dead knot, is a 
prize for the sharpest eyes. Ruby Throat, the 
smallest of feathery things, and loneliest, a 
bright image of airy motion, and yet has the 
right-of-way to the trumpet vines; while the 
fussy housewives so confiding and yet hiding, 
appearing and disappearing, a sort of genial 
hide-and-seek game, and they play it to perfec- 
tion, trusting you and glad to have you so near. 
That Cedar Bird is a beauty, with his neat- 
fitting Quakerish dress of drab and brown — 
how prim he looks, now nicely behaved, he is 
no singer, but with his blackish wings and 



148 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

short tail tipped with yellow and magnificent 
top-knot, he wins applause — and so on for 
pages we could write, and not even then give 
"honorable mention" of all the plumaged song- 
sters who visit us in summer and winter. They 
are all welcome and our garden hospitality is 
cheerfully accorded, because they pay as they 
come and go. 

"June overhead! 
All the birds know it, for swift they have sped 
Northward, and now they are singing like mad; 
June is full-tide for them; June makes them 

glad, 
Hark, the bright choruses greeting the day — 

Sorrow away J 



)> 



June is the month of roses and birds, both 
are garden necessities and blessings. 

The first Rose that opens is greeted like an 
expected old friend after a long absence. The 
next day there are four or five and then they 
produce by the handsful. The glory of the 
rose is its profusion. The whole Rosacea? 
family has this heartiness. It flings its beau- 
tiful petals down from the apple-trees by the 
thousands and shakes showers of them out 
from the cherries and plums. The first brood 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 149 

of young robins is out and flying. The young 
cat-birds are just hatching. Mother birds are 
everywhere in daily expectation. The air is 
full of love songs and parental care. There 
are only two fruits that are red and ripe in 
June, strawberries and cherries, but they are 
ample for one month. The birds know their 
opportunity and boldly claim their portion. In 
the garden June glorifies work. Every tool is 
in use and kept bright and tempting for hand 
exercise. Every tree is full leaved and every 
leaf is plump and rich in Summer color. Some 
early hay has been cut. The cows are in the 
rich pastures in great content for flies have not 
yet hatched to any extent. The brooks are 
still full but no longer noisy. Daisies are blos- 
soming, bright eyed and attractive. The bees 
are alert, 



a 



Seeing only what is fair 
Sipping only what is sweet." 

O this beautiful June how it appeals and 
coaxes ; — 

"Whether we look or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur or see it glisten" 



SILENCES OF NATURE AND LIFE. 



CHAPTER X. 

SILENCES OF NATURE AND LIFE. 

We sat one evening in our arbor and 
watched with keenest interest the deepening 
twilight overspreading earth and sky. Up 
from the sea came a refreshing breeze. The 
quiet, the shadows, the genial starlight were 
just the needed conditions demanded by every 
sense. We are learning the value of silence, a 
difficult but important lesson. It was certainly 
edifying to watch the changing light of the 
passing day, the slow creeping of stealthy 
shadows, the grotesque shapes that familiar 
things took on and the weirdlike relations as- 
sumed, making our garden seem so unnatural, a 
strange field and we strangers in it. How 
gradually every aspect was changed; all color 
gone from grass and shrub, trees gaunt and 
grim and threatening, fragrance scarcely 
sensed, and every form fading into semi-dark- 
ness. But the Silence — what a benediction! 
How soothing the reminiscent mood, memory 
and imagination quietly recalling and creating 
delicate pictures, peopling them with real life 

153 



154 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

tints. Oft when together there comes over us 
this spirit, not that we hold ourselves apart 
and are dispassionate, not that language fails 
or ideas are wanting; nay, but in some way 
hearts are suborned and speech is unwelcome, 
then it is that silence is often the most perfect 
communion. Are there not times in this hu- 
man life of ours when the spirit seems as if 
apart from the body, when new heavens and 
new earths are created, when stars sing as erst 
they sang at Creation's dawn, when dewy 
freshness touches everything into rare beauty, 
then comes the full consciousness of the over- 
shadowing Presence and we are as if hid in 
a cleft and the place becomes a sanctuary for 
the commingling and communion of Soul with 
Oversoul. 

There is a silence that is empty and suffocates 
and starves. There is a society even in the 
deepest solitude that satisfies beyond all word 
expression. Not every soul covets this secret 
place, but they who do whether in chamber or 
cathedral or forest or mountain top find Him 
and they find the voices and noises and jangling 
of earth all hushed. Then there is fellowship. 

Oh, the gladness and the madness of the cup, 
beaded to its very brim, that life holds to the 
lips of youth. Drinking of it, there are fore- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 155 

tastes and foregleams, opening and intensify- 
ing with keen alertness every faculty. Thus the 
whole nature becomes atune and like a sensitive 
harp vibrates at touch of unseen hands. Then it 
is that thoughts too deep for laughter or tears 
or speech fill the shrine while Love sits queen 
in the majesty of silence. How dear are the 
woods then, how charming the melody of bird- 
song, how welcome the sunshine or the clear 
star-lit sky, how soothing the swaying tree- 
branches, how delicious the pervasive fra- 
grance of the garden and the fields, how 
blessed to be alone, or, better still, with one 
whose very being is attuned with your own — 
two souls as one, and with but a single thought. 
Just here is the mystery of life, inexplicable yet 
beautiful, and imperative is the need of keeping 
this idealism untarnished amid the home cares 
of every-day life. 

Nature variously impresses one. She has 
her language to be heard and read, lessons to 
be learned and heeded. She has her seasons 
of grandeur clothed in majesty and ruling at 
will, of sublime silence also, and lovely in gent- 
lest manifestations. Some of her most impor- 
tant workings are carried on in unbroken si- 
lence. There is heard no rushing sound as of 
the pomp and fury of a cavalcade when the 



156 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

broad tides of sunlight break over our dark 
world. There is no creaking of heavy axles or 
groaning of cumbrous machinery as our solid 
globe wheels onward in its vast eliptic path. 
The music of the spheres is imaginary to all 
organs but spiritual. The blazing meteor that 
rushes through the heavens with such startling 
brilliance arrests only the eye. Massive moun- 
tains have been piled up in great ridges by na- 
ture's quiet upheavals. The great trees that 
bring forth their boughs, beautifying and shad- 
ing the earth; the plants that put forth their 
flowers and emit such fragrant odors; the 
grass that covers the bare and bald places as 
with woven tapestry — all these are seen but 
unheard transactions. No ear hears the mil- 
lion rootlets pumping their moisture to give 
beauty to the eye and bread to the mouth ; could 
it all be heard as human machinery is, it would 
fill the world with clamor, it is only the energy 
of little things that expends itself in noise and 
violence. The power which carries millions of 
worlds through infinite cycles of space is as 
noiseless as the drifting of thistledown. Grand 
as are the impressions of nature's noises, they 
do not affect a sensitive spirit as her silences. 

It is the silent forces which are our great 
benefactors. Not the thunders shaking the very 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 157 

foundations, but the gentler rain and dew so 
almost inperceptibly distilled, these enrich the 
earth and refresh all forms of vegetable life. 
Not the Niagaras with their mad rush of wa- 
ters and deafening cataracts, but the steady 
and quiet streams, carrying refreshment to 
thirsty lands. There is nothing that can 
break the frosty fetters of old winter save the 
mild and melting forces of springtime. All 
the wintry tempests cannot shake from the for- 
est trees the dry and rustling leaves of last 
summer's growth, but the gently flowing sap 
will unclasp them and compel them to give way 
to new foliage. The awful roar of old ocean's 
infuriated voice, the wild scream of the terrific 
hurricane, the swollen mountain torrent rum- 
bling down over cragged cliffs, the rolling peals 
of thunder from the black-browed storm — these 
are but Nature's pealing oratorios, her pas- 
sionate outbursts of vocal praise, breaking in 
upon the universal calm. The forests murmur, 
but the constellations whirl on in everlasting 
silence. The seraphim sing, the Shekinah 
glory speaks not. The high priest discourses 
ably, but the Urim and Thummim, the blazing 
stones upon his breast, flash forth meanings 
deeper and diviner far. So ever the mighty 
workers in the universe, are most unobtrusive* 



158 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

They have their divine mission and to its quick 
fulfillment they ever hasten. 

The passions of unsanctified nature are vio- 
lent and work with relentless fury among the 
races and here arises the long heart-rending 
wail of woe from crushed victims. Ambition 
utters loud harangues. Fame heralds its 
boasted heroism. Revenge wails in woeful 
chant its dire disappointments. But Love moves 
queen-like amid the sorrowing, drying tears 
and assuaging griefs. Faith, patience and hu- 
mility possess the quiet spirit, theirs a readi- 
ness to yield, but an unflinching integrity, power 
but only for service. True benefactors never 
sound the pharisaic trumpet, to call together 
witnesses of their charitable deeds. Verily the 
unwritten charities of life are more than the 
written. The noblest emotions of the human 
heart are too big for utterance; they are felt 
and lived. The grandest strains of melody, 
echoing in the human soul have never been 
sung. "The Messiah" of Handel was but a 
faint echo of the greater Messiah that thrilled 
his soul. The noblest men and women have 
been the silent and effective workers. The shal- 
low pretender in life is boisterous, yet no bur- 
dened heart is relieved. Heaven puts higher es- 
timates upon the silent love-workers than upon 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 159 

the merely mitered head or crowned brow or 
imperial form that would vaunt its own deeds. 

The greatest of physical paradoxes is a sun- 
beam. It is the most potent and versatile force 
we have, yet it ever behaves as if the gentlest 
and most accommodating. Nothing can fall 
more softly upon the earth, not even the feath- 
ery flakes of snow which thread their way so 
delicately through the atmosphere as if too 
filmy to yield to the demands of gravitation. 
The eye, tenderest of human organs, is pierced 
hourly by thousands of sunbeams, yet suffers 
no pain, rather rejoices in the sweet inflowing 
tides. Yet a few of those rays, insinuating 
themselves into a mass of iron like the "Brit- 
tania Tubular Bridge," will compel the closely 
knit particles to separate and will sway the 
vast structure very sensibly. The glory of 
sunbeams upon our great sheets of water lift 
up innumerable tons into atmospheric cisterns, 
only to drop them again in snows upon the 
mountains or in fresh showers upon thirsty 
plains, or in the nightly dew. The marvel is, 
as we think it, that a power so capable of 
assuming such a diversity of forms and produc- 
ing such stupendous results, should come to us 
in a most gentle way and be so easy of man- 
agement. How it types the work of the Di- 



160 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

vine Spirit, coming in the love-form and giving 
peace. So it is our deepest feelings are un- 
speakable and our love unutterable. The Spirit 
does not converse vocally with the millions of 
worshippers. He does what is infinitely better, 
diffuses through the soul a sublime conscious- 
ness of His presence and help. 

The beauty and power of human life are in 
its silent forces. We feel this influence. It is 
that indefinable something that carries with it 
the personality of the individual. Christianity 
itself owes by far the greater part of its moral 
power, not so much to the precepts and parables 
of Christ as to His marvellously perfect life- 
character. Truth is never so powerful as when 
embedded in personality. Just here is the deep 
secret of the incarnation. A personal manifes- 
tation of God is the positive human need. An 
example to follow is infinitely better than a 
precept to heed. Precepts could be spoken 
from the heavens at no sacrifice, but an incar- 
nation is the highest level of sacrifice. The Di- 
vine glory must needs be lessened and lowered, 
softened and shaded, to bring it down to our 
human level. So was the incarnation a neces- 
sity. The look, the touch, the act, the word, 
the life was what the race longed for. In the 
Christ they had its largest realization. He was 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS i6r 

the Life and the Light of the World. The 
power of genuine character, then, is both mag- 
netic and dynamic, and both go on in silence. 
Such lives are evangels. They hasten by a good 
deal the coming of the King's kingdom. 

"Of every work, the silent part is best, 
Of all expression, that which cannot be ex* 
pressed." 

One's life is a building built from within in 
silence. Environment, associations, influence, 
atmosphere supply material and go far to de- 
termine the plan and character of the building 
— a hovel or a palace. Each day and hour, 
fifty or more faculties or sentiments or powers 
within, are building in the material furnished 
and the character-edifice rises steadily as coral 
reefs from beneath the sea. Some rocks are 
so hard and flinty that iron wedges and heavy 
sledges fail to splinter the stubborn mass. Then 
the more effective plan is to cut grooves in the 
rock into which wooden wedges of very hard 
fibre are tightly inserted. Water is then ap- 
plied and the wedges begin to swell and must 
have room for expansion. The flinty hearts of 
the rock cannot withstand this silent and power- 
ful influence, and from top to bottom it is rent 



162 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and the workman's will is accomplished. What 
noise and visible vigorous effort fail to do some 
quiet life-power will achieve. The iron sledge- 
hammer methods often fail, but patience and 
persistence conquer. To do our best work 
both repose of spirit and manner are neces- 
sary. The excited man is never master of the 
situation. The anxious and troubled worker is 
never master of himself. The restless, nervous 
worker works at great disadvantage to himself 
and disturbs all who work with him. One must 
have repose of spirit to get the best out of self 
and the most out of life; and he must have re- 
pose of manner to inspire fruitful energy in 
others. 

How many precious revelations of Himself 
has God given to individual souls, and inva- 
riably these have been in secret places and in 
quiet hours, apart and alone. Silence in His 
secret pavilion, and there is His communion, 
"Be still, and know that I am God!" He that 
is restless gets no rootage nor fruitage. There 
is no mechanism so delicate as the adjustment 
of forces which make up human life. Its ad- 
justment is ever done in secret; its working is 
ever in society! 

So far had I thought, and talked in quiet 
undertone, for the evening was instinct with 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 163 

inspiration. Our souls hung suspended in its 
stillness and the whole Heaven seemed sphered 
about us. Ruth broke it gently by saying, 
"There, I think you have given us quite a fit- 
ting speech; let us walk about our garden and 
see it and feel all of this delightful star-lit at- 
mosphere." Suiting the action to the word, she 
arose, and took me by the arm and we walked 
about our garden and it never seemed so per- 
fect a paradise. In our hearts we sang, 



'God's in His heaven, 
All's right with the world.' 



SHRUBS AND TREES, 



CHAPTER XI. 

SHRUBS AND TREES. 

A real picture of our garden belongings 
would help to a readier comprehension of this 
chapter and would, I think, add a bit of pleas- 
ure to the reader. Yet the picture is not unus- 
ual, in fact is often duplicated. Here are fa- 
vorite niches, pet corners not overcrowded, sur- 
prise combinations arresting attention, really 
amateur gardening greeting you at every turn, 
places where you would enjoy tucking in some 
extras or questioning why so arranged. A 
garden is individual, the owner's mark is on it 
and his characteristics are everywhere noted. 
In front are a dozen generous trees, maples, 
elms, oaks, spruce, larches, beeches blending 
finely in form and color, giving an imposing 
frontage and according ever a hearty welcome 
to visitors. We never tire of them, they are 
always interesting and companionable. Follow- 
ing the hedge, we have massed shrubs and flow- 
ers of varying heights and colors and seasons, 
studying pictorial effect; some are tall to screen 
objectionable things beyond the fence, others 

167 



168 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

at certain points are low to keep unobstructed 
a pleasing view of the off scape; — again they 
recede into deep bays to emphasize the shadows 
that stretch out over the lawn, so giving an 
ever varying edge, adding both charm and in- 
dividuality to the composition. 

The lawn is the heart of our garden and has 
the right of way, possible because it was Ruth's 
plea, "let us have a generous lawn." It reaches 
out over the longest part of the garden and 
one of the happiest, it is so restful to the 
eye. The birds enjoy it, especially the robins 
who regard it as their own hunting ground for 
luscious lunches. They work it vigorously morn 
and eve. The children claim it as just the spot 
for a barefoot race with Lionel, which is often 
given with several tumble-downs, mingled with 
squeals and shouts and laughter. It is training 
patch for young athletes, an appetiser, a balm 
for restful sleep. The lawn subserves its pur- 
pose. When we took possession of this garden 
of delights, it had suffered from neglect; in 
reconstructing we broke up its level and shaped 
it to fit space and sunlight and ornament, 
worked into it our best ideas to make it ideal. 
We avoided straight lines, nature delights in 
curves, the few shrubs were of the hardy native 
species rather than horticultural varieties. So 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 169 

after it was all finished and growing finely we 
subjected it to the critical inspection and en- 
dorsement of experts — our friends! 

The grouping effect of flowering shrubs is 
very pleasing. Here are the white and purple 
lilacs, the scent of which is so delicate at night 
or after a shower, deutzias, syringas, bridal 
wreath, Japanese snowball far better than the 
old varieties; rose of Sharon, the new double 
white and pink kinds blossoming in August, re- 
minding one of camelias; splendid hydrangeas, 
the Paniculata Grandiflora, but the name don't 
begin with the great heads of white bloom, 
changing to dull pink and lasting six long weeks. 
Forsythia sometimes called Sunshine Bush and 
by far the prettiest name; quince Japonica, its 
fruit so fragrant for the bureau; mountain lau- 
rel, waxy and rich of color; azalias, smoke tree 
or purple fringe; magnolia stellela, flowering 
gradually, making a showy display; spirea, a 
pretty bush with its plumes of pinkish flowers; 
red twigged dogwood and Japanese barberry 
out border lines because in winter time they 
brighten the picture with their red branches and 
redder berries. That Crimson Climber blos- 
soms endlessly because it is near the kitchen 
door and so is the trumpet vine; it brings the 
Ruby Throats, those wee-winged mites seeming 



170 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

so like fairy folk, so like a bright blossom on 
gauzy pinions, coming like diamond flashes 
and dashing away exhilarated on the sweet nec- 
tar of the vine. They nest yonder in the white 
birch and a dainty nest it is with two of the 
tiniest ivory eggs ever laid. 

Trees add so much to our garden. They 
give tone and character. They are as fit a gar- 
den subject as flowers. Their growth and life 
is a constant source of wonder, the great roots 
and greater trunk and wide spreading branches 
and breathing building leaves, the infinity of 
form and expression they perpetually assume, 
the strength and durability and generosity, 
these strong characteristics ever inspire the 
grander and finer emotions. I pity the man or 
woman who is not on speaking terms with some 
of these grand old trees, for they seem to us 
more like persons than things. They work on 
our moods, through their moods, appealing as 
no flower or shrub can. They interpret them- 
selves to us as if they knew us. Beneath them 
the heart feels nearer to that depth of life the 
far sky means. That spiritual repose found 
only in ideal and pure beauty comes then be- 
cause the touch and color to tree and sky and 
earth are blent into unity, then imagination pic- 
tures her brightest and best. We don't wonder 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 171 

that in the far away times they worshipped 
venerable trees, and had their favorite gods and 
goddesses templed and throned in dense and 
sacred groves. If I were an idolater I should 
worship two gods, the sun as my biggest and 
grandest; the elm tree as my dearest and hu- 
manest, the one I could touch and love and side 
up to and feel its personal communion ! 

There is nothing more beautiful than a tree 
standing forth in all the glory of full leafage, 
shimmering in the sunlight, makingmyriadbows 
to the vagrant winds that play on all sides. Oh 
the conscious joy a tree must have of its beauty 
and usefulness. It certainly is nature's finest 
product, the one growth of which she is de- 
servedly proud. Beast, bird, and man seek its 
shade and fruit. Man only senses its beauty 
and he only knows how to put its varied wood 
to a thousand uses in building, tools, fuel, 
fruits, fibres, resin, gums, drugs, and a host of 
other useful products; shade and seclusion, or- 
naments for parks, lawns and highways, or as 
forests conserving the rainfall and distributing 
it normally and so regulating the water supply. 
I am sure the trees must feel and enjoy the pres- 
ence of birds and I am equally sure the birds 
love the trees. They fly so oft up into their 
branches, either to gather or eat their food or 



172 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

rest from the hot sun or hide away from some 
hateful shrike or spiteful king-bird or make of 
its shade a trysting place or find a perch where 
they can pour forth their matchless songs, or 
better still, to plant their home nest and rear 
their young. 

One may know a tree scientifically, give its 
Latin name, describe its habitat, tell all about 
its leaf work, its growth and expansion and 
seeding, and yet not know the tree. Love is 
the interpreter of nature. A tree is greater 
than all its parts. Its parts may be tabulated 
making a fine report, its pictures may be most 
captivating but a tree is grander by far than 
all this. It has an individuality of life and feel- 
ing, it has a being and is so human, it is a 
friend. Nature is never cold and pulseless and 
enigmatical to a sympathetic heart. Sit here 
under these oaks and elms, now more than a 
hundred years old, how strangely they affect 
you; instinctively, you think of other days for 
here are three generations and more of people 
and time and history and family incidents, busi- 
ness transactions, love affairs, gossipy news of 
by-gone years, all so crowded with interest and 
yet all these secrets are locked and sealed for 
nature is no tell-tale! 

We have been out under the trees all day. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 173 

Ruth proposed a vacation from all literary 
work out in orchard and garden for mutual 
rest. The weather conditions were perfect, the 
atmosphere a genuine tonic, the sunshine perva- 
sive and enlivening, nature in her best recipient 
and imparting moods. She took some work 
with her, and I, in passing the study table, 
seized two of the latest magazines and a new 
unread book; magazines and books and work 
useless for they were not thought of all day. 
What a luxury that hammock ride, that unread 
literature within touch untouched, those fine 
old fruitful apple and chery trees, this woodsy 
aroma imparted to the atmosphere by the old 
orchard so pleasant and precious; the far away 
sky with its fleecy clouds leisurely floating in 
the azure as if they had nothing to do; the 
rippling of Arno over its miniature rapids so 
cool and soothing; the chirping of the birds all 
about us eyeing us and wondering why so quiet 
and unoccupied; bees busily industrious gather- 
ing honey, buzzed about scolding us for idling 
the day; the factory bell tolling out the slowly 
passing hours in listless spirit — sleeping, look- 
ing, talking, enjoying, idling and resting! 
While the day was passing, gentlest of zephyrs 
were occasionally talking to and toying with the 
leaves and creating a good deal of sweet merri- 



174 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ment among them, judging from the way they 
wriggled and danced singly or in branches full ; 
the sunlight was ever flashing his health mes- 
sages through the foliage, making it all ablush 
with an extra beauty; the fairies merrily caught 
on twig and branch and swung from one to 
another chanting the tenderest of cradle-songs 
as if they would sing us asleep, and then laugh- 
ing to the echo as they saw us watching them; 
yes, we swung or slept or sat and took nature's 
best to the full, dreaming and visioning with 
open eyes, and attent ear and alert faculty, yet 
resting ! 

About three o'clock the members of the Mon- 
day Club began dropping in and by three and 
a half all were in their places except our pastor, 
Dr. Archibald, who had gone with Mrs. A. to 
the "Garden of the Gods. ,, 

A jollier set of folks never met in apple- 
orchard to swing and visit and recreate. Our 
jovial Dr. Lamson was at his best and when is 
he not? He, and the old sea captain, Waldron, 
vie with each other as to who shall tell the 
keenest and wittiest stories, and when night 
came they were neck and neck, both deserving 
prizes. Our artist friends Fitz and Baer had 
so much to say about the luminous atmosphere, 
the fluctuating property of light and its values, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 175 

the right colorings of nature, textures and quali- 
ties, always so discriminating, so loyal to the 
true spirit of art, it was a real joy to listen to 
them. Gradually they were drawn into a dis- 
cussion of the real merits of the impressionistic 
school of artists and their work. The discus- 
sion was spirited and all took part in it, but woe 
to the luckless one who sided too sympatheti- 
cally with the extremists. How clear and keen 
the critcisms of Fitz, who told us that the eyes 
vary more widely in the way they see than do 
the cameras, that the realism of nature is ever 
variable as the angle of incidence, no two per- 
sons see alike that the same landscape painted 
by two of the famous Barbizon artists gave two 
different pictures, that the standard "true to 
nature' , varies as the individuals and as the 
country in which they live; all art is more or 
less provincial and especially significant of its 
environment, that a work of art appeals more 
strongly to its own people than to any other, 
and so for an hour this artistic discussion ran on 
most profitably. Captain Waldron, a lover of 
art and possessed of a poetical temperament, 
gave us some word picturings of old ocean in 
calm and storm, and at times his descriptions 
were thrilling. Mr. Baer extemporized an 
easel, and in a most sprightly way sketched 



176 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

heads and faces and talked learnedly and face- 
tiously about the phrenological traits, carica- 
turing prominent men and women of the day. 
His sketches were coveted as souvenirs. Our 
dining-room and arbor hold many such sketches. 
The club stayed unusually late and we won- 
dered at it, when just at six o'clock a caterer 
came and planted his tables and displayed his 
wares and materials and nobody said a word; 
of course we looked on indifferent. At a signal, 
Mrs. Wentworth, a dear, good neighbor, said, 
"We may as well have our tea out here/' and 
led the way. That hour of feasting and flow 
of soul was most genial and congenial, so full 
of heart life and brainy flashes of wit and wis- 
dom, it closed the day like a gorgeous sunset 
with exquisite colorings. 

When all had gone we sat on our front pi- 
azza, happy in the conscious afterglows of de- 
lightful friendships! Before us were the two 
grand elms that interlocked over the gateway. 
Their arching branches covered with rich fo- 
liage seem like suddenly arrested sprays of 
fountains. No tree for beauty can compare 
with the elm. Henry Ward Beecher in his 
"Norwood" wrote, "The Elms of New Eng- 
land ! They are as much a part of her beauty 
as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 177 

of its architecture." But the maples are beauti- 
ful and branchy and tasty and ever-great favor- 
ites. The oaks have aspirations for age and 
power. They have a compact solid manner of 
growth and their dark rich leaves are ruggedly 
cut ; yet they are highly prized. 

Yonder at our right is a group of white 
birches, the "Ladies of the Forest," most grace- 
ful and artistic in shape and look, yet restless 
and shortlived and seem eager to be gone. 

Here on the north side of the house is a row 
of seven Lombards standing like solemn senti- 
nels ever on watchful guard, grand old trees, 
and always grand in effect, though the canons 
of gardening say that its formality is inappro- 
priate in naturalistic landscape; — canons be 
hanged, to us they are cathedral in character, 
distinctly architectonic, exclamation points, 
they fit in our garden scheme because at that 
point accentuation was needed and they accen- 
tuate ! 

Blessed be the trees and blessed be the man 
or woman, who, beneath their gracious shade 
and friendly influence, finds rest and takes on 
new courage to go again into life more strongly 
equipped for the gentler duties. 



178 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

"Away to the Trees then let us go, 
For it matters not whether^ rain or snow; 
They wait for us" 



FICTION IN LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FICTION IN LITERATURE. 

It is a reading age. Everybody reads, old 
and young, rich and poor, educated and illiter- 
ate, in the shop and store and home, on car 
and boat by the snatches of odd moments and 
by the hour. The ardent scholar pores over 
his choice and costly volumes and gleans knowl- 
edge from the storied page ; the street-sweeper 
picks up a bit of soiled paper and, leaning for 
a little on his broom, slowly spells his way 
through a few sentences and calls that read- 
ing; and so it is, for he has gained something 
and is stronger. But between these two classes 
there is a large and growing constituency, dif- 
fering in taste and habit, purpose and plan, sta- 
tion and culture, who read papers and maga- 
zines and books, ever making fresh demands 
on the clicking press. "Of making many books 
there is no end," is a truism that grows truer 
and intenser with every passing year. 

Two-thirds of the books issued by our great 
libraries are fiction. The novel forms by far 
the greater bulk of books printed and read. The 

181 



182 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

Epic and the Addisonian essay have utterly lan- 
guished. Even poetry, though of comparative 
high order, is not specially coveted by editor or 
reader. It strikes one singularly enough that 
in this age so full of ripe and rich history, won- 
derful invention, startling discovery, powerful 
combinations, thrilling incidents and yet more 
thrilling achievements, that the story-reading 
habit is so dominant and persistent and so uni- 
versal. We need not scold over it, as if in 
mind and morals we were deteriorating. 

The truth is, we are growing up into realms 
of richer life in history, and art, and science 
and indeed of all knowledge. Our horizon of 
thought sensibly widens and heightens. To-day 
our creative literary talent goes largely to the 
making of novels. The drama is given over to 
the study of social difficulties, or to the close im- 
itation of contemporary life. It concenters its 
thought on matters of passing interest. Poetry 
has lost its grip on the public mind, its vitality 
has waned. A few books are published, but they 
are not emphatic, are not commanding literary 
attention. The imagination and the sympathies 
and the artistic intelligence of the literary world 
are almost wholly devoted to the novel, and 
bids fair to do so for decades to come. The 
novel has of late years widened its sphere and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 183 

has by no means reached its highest and best, 
into it the wisest thoughts and best sentiments, 
involving the noblest life, are wrought up into 
most singular and lifelike experiences. Dick- 
ens wrote to correct abuses and expose shams, 
and his books worked marvels. They cleared 
up atmospheres and softened the asperities of 
man and woman. They revolutionized wrong 
usages, though hoary with age, and opened up 
a new era of humanities. And what is true of 
Dickens is true in some sense of every great 
story writer who writes with purpose and plan, 
and pours into his living pages his loves and 
hates and hopes and convictions. 

It is only the great masters of fiction whom 
we remember, not so quickly by what they write 
and how, but by the friends they have intro- 
duced us to. How well we know such books 
and what repeated visits we pay them, and how 
precious the mutual friendships. But they are 
ideal, you say; what of that, they are so much 
the more real to us. The mere mention of Ad- 
dison or the sight of the ''Spectator" instantly 
suggests the genial Sir Roger; Goldsmith and 
you see and hear the wise Dr. Primrose, and 
the good-natured Tony; Sheridan and up comes 
Jo. Surface and the inevitable Mrs. Malaprop; 
Thackeray and forthwith Colonel Newcome 



184 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and Becky Sharpe and Henry Esmond are with 
us; Scott and a troop of roistering fellows, 
Scotch to the core, pass in review and pay re- 
spects ; George Eliot and here come Silas Mar- 
ner and honest Adam Bede and the brave Felix 
Holt; Victor Hugo and that wonderful char- 
acter Jean Valjean and the good Bishop Myriel 
and so many others summoned as by magic. 
Mere acquaintances do not count for greatness, 
only valuable friends and how these friends 
multiply through good books and we read them 
again and again because they are so true and 
dear. How well we know them, of their com- 
radeship we do not tire, their voices are never 
harsh but so sincere, their spirit beautiful and 
so we covet evenings with them as they are, 
accessories and all, and are never disappointed 
in their coming and company. 

I have often dreamed of meeting my book- 
friends and they were as real as dreams are, 
their countenances perfectly familiar, voices 
natural, and their bearing in accord with char- 
acter. I have fancied that some day we should 
meet and recognize and grasp hands and talk 
of the times and people and conditions in their 
books and love each other more than ever. 

A good story must be true to life and life is 
endless in its possible shiftings and combina- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 185 

tions. Hence the vigorous portrayal of such 
a life is full of educative force. Things are 
made vividly real, emphasis is put on begin- 
nings and possibilties, the power of circum- 
stances is intensified, and the open doors of op- 
portunity are more than hinted at. In these 
stories we insensibly take the place of hero or 
heroine or subordinate character, and think 
and feel and act with them. We suffer and re- 
joice together, and together struggle against 
misfortunes and accept the inevitable or clamb- 
er to the heights in spite of adversities and exult 
in conquests achieved and victories won. 
The characters are so real we enter into them, 
and for a while we are out of our world into 
theirs, and are living their lives and fighting 
their battles and bearing their burdens and in 
every way feeling their joys and sorrows. By 
our sympathy with these characters we see 
things in a truer light and are taught to turn 
from the false and unreal and immoral, and 
growingly to admire the manly and womanly 
whether rich or poor, and so the spirit of kind- 
ness grows apace, a kindness that can "feel 
another's woe." 

Story telling is indigenous to the race, it is 
the marked character of genius, existing and 
potential in the musician, the painter and the 



1 86 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

architect, but the novelist is the oldest of them 
all. The story element has ever a charm, it is 
full of appeal and life, and is demanded as a 
rest and refreshment. It matters little whether 
literally true or not, whether of to-day or a 
century ago, but it must be a good story and 
carry the realities of life. There is only one 
test for the novel, that it be first of all a well- 
constructed story, that it deal sincerely with 
life and character, and that its play of emotion 
be true and sane and healthy. As to style, that 
matters little, the living story leaping from the 
sincere heart will create its own best style and 
best suited to the characters — the style will be 
the author's self. The author will not show life 
as he sees it, but as he feels it; it is the difference 
of eye and soul, the photographer and artist. 
No important work was ever done unless there 
was a great central idea mastering brain and 
heart and filling the artist with spiritual dy- 
namic. 

Fiction being both a transcript and criticism 
of life, nothing that pertains to life is foreign 
to it. It has the wide range of human expe- 
rience and because the great novel is a work 
of art and true to life, it is never likely to lose 
its power over the human mind. But this de- 
pends upon the artist. The story material is 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 187 

ever at hand or may be by study and research. 
These the artist must select and combine into 
ideal forms in such relation that his characters 
shall really live on his pages. All art is illusive, 
and therefore plastic to touch; the marble 
statue but represents the human form, the bril- 
liant painting but represents sunsets and rolling 
seas; now the illusion must be perfect and here- 
in is the artist power. 

Granted that all the passionate love stories 
have been told and retold, that every possible 
combination of plot and counter-plot has been 
appropriated, and that it is more difficult to 
write the great novel now than formerly. Yet 
is not human nature the same as ever, is not 
life ever new in its varying unfoldings, and do 
not the "old, old stories" become fresh and 
original with every new generation? The artist 
is a creator and it is his province to make all 
things new. Life has very few dramatic situa- 
tions, but the great forces of love and hate and 
jealousy and crime and passion and sorrow and 
heroism and honor have the field and operate 
it as ever. No, the novelists' themes are not 
poverty struck but the artist is if he cannot work 
the combination. The palette of the painter 
holds only the seven primary colors it held in 
the days of Raphael. The seven notes of music 



188 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

are the same now as when Beethoven mar- 
shalled them into grand oratorios. The novel- 
ist of to-day has what all novelists have had 
and no more. It is said that every writer of 
real parts has it in him to write one great novel. 
Du Maurier wrote "Trilby," and exhausted 
Limself ! He is not the only writer that one 
book has drained dry. Many an author had 
better have written his one book, like Gold- 
smith, and be known by that than have several 
and none worth living. So many books fall 
dead from the press, so few demand a second 
edition, literature had been indebted had they 
never been written. So many books have been 
written because they could be, not because they 
must be ! You can easily count the books that 
have the everlasting life-mark on them. 

The fiction of any country is closely allied 
to its poetry since the highest order of both 
is a larger revelation of heart and soul. Both 
are interpreters of things felt but unknown and 
needing a revelation. So it is the novel is a 
record of emotion, the study of a human life 
touched with emotion, of two lives with similar 
emotions, domestic life with emotion interfus- 
ing it, of a great historical character aroused 
and invigorated by a great emotional activity. 

It is universally recognized that the love of 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 189 

the sexes is the master-passion of humanity. In 
youth, it is strong and mastering, in middle life 
it is beautiful and fruitful and its memories lin- 
ger long amid the growing years of the aged. 
Love is life's most intense theme and touches 
everything, and the novel that does not exploit 
it and beautify it is disappointing. But for love 
the novel would not be written. The poem and 
the novel of all forms of literature dwell upon 
it and revel in its possibilites and delights. 
They weave it into garments, wreathe it into 
coronets, shape it into scepters, gem it with 
brilliant jewels, and crown its lordly men and 
queenly women with exquisite beauty and 
grace. The study of the fiction and poetry of 
any nation is but the study of the real people 
themselves, and you may easily read their con- 
ditions socially, morally and religiously. Geol- 
ogy is characterized by distinct ages, Silurian, 
Devonian, Carboniferous, etc. Art and fiction 
are so real and personal they mirror each its 
own age in the line of history, and you may 
read the character of the civilization of any 
age by its intellectual work. 

Fiction is a representative art. A great au- 
thor is a great artist. He has insight and fore- 
sight; he grasps facts and they speak with the 
force of logic; he marshals events and they 



190 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

glow in the bright tints of reality; he groups 
characters and they make vivid history for any 
age. Hence the art of right reading, of inter- 
preting the deeper and wider thoughts sympa- 
thetically, is as difficult to learn as the art of 
right living. It is impossible to give any method 
to one's reading until we get nerve enough to 
reject. So many books were never made for 
us and so many that will inspire us in every 
way. The habit of reading idly, debilitates and 
corrupts the mind for wholesome reading. 

Our reading should be twofold — for profit 
and for entertainment. Both alike are helpful 
and valuable. Reading for entertainment is as 
legitimate as reading for profit. We need to 
rid ourselves of the idea that we are wasting 
time and energy when we are not doing some- 
thing toward self-improvement. The average 
American needs to cultivate a healthy faith in 
the duty of entertaining and refreshing himself. 
The struggle with us has been one of conquest, 
the mastery of the new-world soil, the creation 
of government, broadening and deepening of 
the civic principles and the beginnings of for- 
tunes, so that we have had little or no time for 
rest and recreation. 

The old New England traditions have made 
work a virtue and idleness a sin. The great 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 191 

mass of people do not need to be urged to rest. 
After a hard day's work one does not always 
feel like taking up the solidest kind of reading. 
Hence the newspaper claims the larger atten- 
tion. It surely ought to have a good portion, 
but by no means all of our reading time. 

Too much newspaper reading is demoraliz- 
ing. Many men read nothing but newspapers. 
Best books rarely or never touched. It is not 
wise to make of one's mind a common sewer 
and turn all the stuff of the great dailies 
through it. One needs only a fraction of it, 
hence the art of skipping is a vital art in news- 
paper reading. 

The literature of the best fiction of to-day 
is as vital as its history or art or science. It 
is fibred in the stronger social instincts. It is a 
healer of its breaches, a corector of its faults, 
an inspirer of its better ideals. It fronts the 
great future with optimistic plans. It tugs away 
at desperate evils. It has withering scorn for 
wrongs and bendictions for good living and 
heroic deeds. The fact is the modern novel is a 
necessity in the life of the world. Life must 
ever have fresh ideals. Must have them to 
save itself from the deadening effect of a grind- 
ing routine, to keep the faculties from being cal- 
loused by the daily touch of taxing duties. We 



192 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

must have new and fresh and impressive ideals. 
The best fiction ever helps us into their realm, 
and this realm is real though ideal. It sheds a 
halo of superhuman light on the ordinary paths, 
it transforms and dignifies and beautifies. These 
ideals come best and freshest from the living 
pages of a strong and healthful story. Here 
the characters live, we make their acquaintance, 
we enter into their life ; it is different from ours, 
we are at once in another world, and what a 
delightful and restful change, what interest is 
gained. These guests with whom we have been 
living through the book are invited guests and 
many of them have come to stay with us through 
life. "The story element" belongs to life. All 
life delights in it that is at all healthful. It is 
the child's realm, in which his biggest faculty, 
his imagination, has its revelry and peoples his 
worlds with its brightest and best; it is the 
young person's dreamland whence come those 
peculiar day-dreams that awake one to life's 
realities; it is the mature mind's recreation 
hour, and the solace and cheer of the aged. 

The work of fiction by our best writers is 
full of high-minded purpose and principle; it 
has in it the true teaching spirit, touching many 
of the great lines of present-day thinking and 
noblest living. A good story full of real and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 193 

true life is ever refreshing and inspiring. How 
welcomely it comes after the tension of pro- 
longed thought and overtaxing work. How it 
takes heart and mind into some other world 
and the new life there rests us like delightful 
travel without any annoying circumstances of 
dust or delay or noise or disagreeable people. 
What a re-creation indeed ! To know the best 
fiction is an education along the lines of largest 
self-culture. 

When Carlyle's manuscript of the 'Trench 
Revolution" was partly destroyed by accident, 
the great Scotchman, whose working power 
was phenomenal, tells us he plunged vigorously 
into Marryatt's novels for diversion and se- 
cured it, and came again to his task with mind 
rested and refreshed. Bismarck in his great 
working days took to the novel at night and 
read himself into mental restfulness. The same 
was true of Gladstone in his hardest-worked 
days, but his reading through years of cultiva- 
tion was fiction and poetry and history and crit- 
icism and the classics. It is sometimes one's se- 
rious duty to leave the weightier books of one's 
library untouched and devote oneself hearti- 
ly to the brightest and most sparkling of novels. 
But this is only occasional, for constant novel 
reading even of the best, is dissipating. 



194 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

There are other lines of reading than fiction, 
and yet many of the masterpieces of literature 
are in the department of fiction, and it is hardly 
necessary to add that there are many novels 
which ought to be studied as one studies a play 
of Shakespeare, or a poem of Browning. Igno- 
rance of the best modern fiction involves ignor- 
ance of a very large part of the very best litera- 
ture; for in no other department of modern 
thought, save that of criticism, has mind been 
so active and so creative. 



MORNING AND EVENING LIFE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MORNING AND EVENING LIGHT. 

The morning and evening light play freely 
on our garden world. It is such a pleasure to 
see and study it. I watch it so interestedly be- 
cause it is so variable in the passing hours of 
day and night, so often elusive and dissolving, 
changing in tone and character — a puzzle, a 
surprise, and an enjoyment. Now it is dull and 
gray, weird and bewitching, bright and joyous, 
golden hued and purplish tinted, indeed all pos- 
sible adjectives are needed to set it forth, and 
fail at that. How few notice these endless va- 
riations. The eye is dull where interest is dead. 
Love and longing train this marvelous instru- 
ment to singular dexterity and most accurate 
work. My garden world grows so wide and 
high, I wonder will it ever stop, but do not 
wish it to. It is ever taking on new phases of 
color and sending off new mixtures of fragrance. 

There is a mysterious power in light, baffling 
all descriptions because it baffles all analysis and 
all knowledge. We know some of its uses and 
potentialities, we can descant on its beauties, de- 

197 



198 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

light in its radiance and absorb its wondrous 
influence. But the secret of its transforming 
power is known only to Him Who commanded 
its existence back at the dawn of creation. That 
first mandate of the Creator. "And God said, 
Let there be light, and light was," is unques- 
tionably the grandest sentence ever spoken or 
written; at least, so all rhetoricians agree. 
Earth was without form and void and darkness 
dense and dismal reigned supreme. A world 
of darkness would have been a world of death. 
Light was God's fashioning spirit, crystalizing 
and unifying matter, establishing order and 
evolving life and beauty.. 

How subtly suggestive of the spiritual. It is 
everywhere, yet invisible; ever revealing and 
ever concealing; enwrapping objects in transfig- 
ured beauty and infusing life as at creation's 
birth. Light is never confined to its centre but 
ever out on diffusive errands flooding a uni- 
verse and revealing worlds on worlds far out 
into space. How pure and beautiful. 

"Hail, Holy Light, of spring of Heaven, first 
born — 
God's eldest daughter! 9 

We do not need the authority of the scien- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 199 

tist nor the researches of the geologist, nor the 
discussions of the philosopher to convince us 
that God created the heavens and the earth. 
God burns yet in every bush. He dwells by the 
seashore and rules it, for it is His; He is en- 
throned on the mountains, His temple is in 
the tiniest flower that blooms, His presence 
gilds and vivifies His worlds with a revealing 
brilliance. His evidence is impressively cumu- 
lative. No contradiction has ever stood before 
it. The mountains that tower to the sky, the 
rivers that run to the great ocean, the ferns 
that adorn the shade-spots in the valley, the ma- 
jestic oak and elm that spread wide their 
branches and shelter bird and beast, the treas- 
ures that are stored away for human use, these 
testify of His creatorship and ownership. The 
miracle of creation is too grand and mastering 
for chance. He brooded over the face of the 
infinite deep, saw and knew its need and com- 
manded light, and light came. 

Light is God's best gift to Nature and is the 
heritage of all mankind. It illumines the palace 
of the noble and brightens the hut of the poor; 
it smiles upon the baby pilgrim as he comes to 
earth, and gilds the very gates of death as he 
passes through in his old age; it greets the 
storm-tossed mariner after a dark night of peril 
on the deep, it brings most blessed relief to the 



200 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

weary sufferer, whose pain made sleep impossi- 
ble and who longed for the breaking of day. 

A sunbeam is inconceivably brilliant and 
swift and penetrative and surcharged with 
electric power. It is a miracle worker, its mira- 
cles transcend all fiction and fill worlds with 
beauty and life. The Sun, though 94,000,000 
miles distant, raises the vapors, moves and pu- 
rifies the oceans, directs the course of winds, 
forms the clouds, fructifies the earth, distributes 
its light and heat and color through every re- 
gion, not only of our globe but of its vast plan- 
etary system. Light is the fleetest force in the 
universe, a worthy messenger of the gods; it is 
the twin of Life, the terms interplay: "God is 
Light," "God is Life," "God is Love"— 
trinity in unity! Is not light the life of the 
world? Is it not the colorist of nature, the art- 
ist of the sky, whose pictures are matchless, 
transcending all human genius ? 

Light is the astronomer's necessity; he must 
have it or the heavens were a blank. We can 
take but the merest bit of it into our eye and 
yet by great ingenuity we make a lens twenty- 
six inches in diameter and bend all possible rays 
to a focus, then magnify the image and thus 
are able to study the whole heavens and note 
its millions of worlds and the millions and bil- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 201 

lions of miles distant from us. Light travels 
186,000 miles per second. It is the aerial sprite 
that carries our measuring rod across the awful 
spaces of utter darkness revealing their pres- 
ence and number and size and distance and 
orbit and cycle. The highest velocity we can 
give a rifle-ball is 2,000 feet a second. We can- 
not compact force enough behind a piece of 
lead to keep it flying; but light flies unweariedly 
and without a diminution of speed. It comes 
from the sun in eight minutes, but from some 
of the more distant stars it requires more than 
a thousand years to reach us, and yet its wing 
is not wearied, nor its rapidity slackened, nor 
its brilliance undimmed, or its power abated! 

Light has no color; color is in the eye or at- 
mosphere and is the result of the various veloci- 
ties of vibration or dust particles. Violet is the 
highest and red the lowest of color vibrations, 
hence color is a constant creation. Light comes 
to the eye as tones to the ear. Light shines — 
does it not also sing? What of the older 
poetry which says, "the morning stars sang to- 
gether" at creation's dawn, and that other line, 
"Thou makest the outgoings of the morning 
and the evening to sing?" Were our senses 
fine enough we could hear the separate keynote 



202 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

of every individual star, for stars differ in light 
and in music. 

What singular contrasts between the morn- 
ing and the evening. The light is brighter in 
the morning than at eventide, more diffusive , 
and suffusive; it seems to come from every- 
whither, while at nightfall it concenters in the 
west, and the east is dark and shadowful. The 
morning light is penetrative and seems to cre- 
ate no shadows. Corot loved the morning 
light, he painted at dawn and ever in keenest 
glee laughed and whistled and sang ; talked with 
trees and birds and flowers and sunlight as if 
they were people. For him nature overflowed 
with delight and he absorbed it and turned 
it into his world-famous pictures. 

How different the morning and evening ef- 
fects on body and spirit. In the morning I am 
at my best, for in the night I bury my yester- 
day's fatigue. In the morning I take hold of 
my duties vigorously; in the evening I relax 
with pleasure. In the morning, conditions fa- 
vorable combine and urge the possible pros- 
pect ; in the evening there is the keen conscious* 
ness of not having fulfilled the promise and 
prophecy of the morning. The brain is clear 
in the morning, and thinking is easy and strong; 
in the evening the brain is weary and diversion 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 203 

is sought for rest's sake. In the morning the 
step is elastic and determined; it is slow and 
measured in the evening. In the morning we 
are equal to any emergency; little things tax 
and weary us at night. How different our 
prayers in the morning and evening hours ! In 
the morning faith and hope are buoyant and 
dominating and we pray for strength and guid- 
ance ; in the evening we are humbled and crave 
pardon and protection. The new day before 
us is as white paper on which there is not a 
word written; at night, alas! what a page and 
what writing and what blots and soilings. The 
day is ever as a new opportunity through open 
doors out into inviting fields, where is work; 
and bread and health; the night closes the door 
and we seek seclusion and repose. 

The Bible is full of morning and evening 
thoughts. It could not well be otherwise, for 
it is such a human book, teeming with the rich- 
est poetic thought of a poetic and devoted peo- 
ple and full of their life experiences. They 
were orientalists, and the hot midday de- 
manded the active evening and morning. The 
phrase meant more to them than it can to us. 
The evening and the morning were the epochal 
day's in creative evolution. "Thy mercies are 
new every morning," and we might well add, 



204 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and fresh every evening. "Thou shewest forth 
Thy loving kindness in the morning and Thy 
faithfulness every evening." u Thy light shall 
break forth as the morning." These are but 
specimen passages; — the number is legion and 
so many marked incidents are connected with 
them, so much of history interwoven the divine 
and the human blending in splendid experiences, 
making the pages everywhere burn with living 
thoughts and living personages. 

It is in the morning and evening hours that 
Nature is at her best, and in these hours is our 
highest enjoyment. The birds turn their faces 
to the rising and setting sun as they pour forth 
their songs and it is noticeable that both the 
tone and quality of their matins and vespers 
appreciably differ. With God's blessed sun- 
shine about and above me, a white world of 
clover abloom at my feet, fragrance so deli- 
ciously delicate, the great trees waving their 
welcomes and the infinite worlds blazing in 
beauty above me, why should not one be happy? 
Why not interpret God by His works, and take 
in of His beauty and show to the world the 
solar face? 

George Meredith's "Hymn to Color" is full 
of genial sympathy with the morning's dawn, 
for this is really the subject of his marked 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 205 

hymn. What a delightful mingling and com- 
mingling of earth and spirit, nature and love, 
the present and future. How vividly is por- 
trayed the first appearing of gray twilight in the 
far east, and then the miracle of beauty work- 
ing itself out so delicately changing the whole 
scheme of color, and clothing air and earth for 
a few fleeting moments with a glowingly bril- 
liant dawn. A singular species of realism runs 
through the changing thought of the whole 
poem, but in no way mars its effect as a poem 
glorifying the dawn. 

One who never rises early in the morning to 
taste the freshest air, to feel the delight of its 
sparkling beauty, to see its earliest pencillings 
and sense most joyously the first tender throbs 
of a beginning day, has missed the rarest treats 
of the outdoor world. How perfect the hush 
over the whole scene of your vision. Quickly 
audible to your waiting ear are the slightest 
sounds. It is a bird that first breaks the silence 
with its charming reveille. Then the fabled 
"dawn breeze" rustling delicately over shrubs 
and flowers and deliciously cooling your brow; 
then the dog's saluting bark, the chanticleer's 
(chant-it-clear) early serenade so jubilant that 
he puts new heart into one; then the trees and 
groves ring with bird songs and because they 



206 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

have the early morning world to themselves 
then it is they fairly let out their extravagant 
delights. Light and life are the twin glories 
of the dawn hour. No hour is quite its equal. 

"How sweet the morning 
With its delicate odors 
Of Earth and Air, 
How soft are the shadows 
That sleep on the sward; 
How tender the hues, 
Like bloom and blush on plum 
Or the far dreamy mountains 
That hold up the sky. 
Gently the witching breezes waft 
The leaves all alive, 
Flashing in Beauty 
Touched by kindling sunlight, 
As in Fairy land. 
A spirit is moving 
Around us unseen, 
It haunts with its presence 
The air, the earth, the heart, 
Breathing its peace! 



f> 



I shall never forget that summer's morning 
when I rose while it was dark that I might 
note the first signs of dawning light pencilling 
the sky and playing on the distant mountains 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 207 

and forests. I climbed to the observatory and 
turned my face in eagerest expectation to the 
east and waited and watched, as determined as 
the old sphinx. I took in all of earth and sky 
that I could. Soon I detected the faintest dawn 
trembling on the bosom of auroral life. How 
marvellously beautiful its tracery and exquisite 
beyond all word painting its roseate coloring. 
In those foregleams I felt the coming day, I 
saw the world astir in its industrial activities, I 
heard the whirr of its machinery, but it grated 
harshly and I banished it all and drank in freely 
through every sense the unexcelled splendor of 
this daybreak. How sweet the atmosphere, like 
wine in the blood, tingling to exhilaration. The 
quiet was absolute, not a stir of leaf nor the 
chirp of bird, nor the bark of dog, nor the 
smoke of chimney — nothing, nobody — pure and 
perfect repose ; only light diffusing and shadows 
fleeing away, for the sun was making haste 
to greet our part of the world and the world 
was all expectancy, trembling with conscious 
delight in its hasting morning bath. 

I saw far away the white mists hovering over 
lakelets like a light veil of gauze. I saw a mil- 
lion dewdrops pendant on grass and leaf and 
flower, in each a bright reflection of the morn- 
ing light. The transparent atmosphere brought 



208 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

far places near and tempted the eye to the most 
remote horizon. The light seemed now break- 
ing out from every part of the heavens at once. 
Darkness was gone, the twilight had been so 
short; the sun fairly hasted to greet the hills 
and valleys and lakes and to call bird and beast 
and man to the inheritance of a new day. I 
turned and looked down on the two splendidl 
elms in front and saw the sunbeams kiss their 
topmost branches and then in a moment bathe 
the whole upper tree and all the trees. Sudden- 
ly the birds awoke to their matin service, and 
sweeter songs I never heard and more lushing 
sunlight I never saw or felt. 

In this ecstasy, as I saw the whole garden lit-* 
erally suffused with golden sunlight, I cried, 
"This is all mine," — mine? Nay, that were 
selfish, u ours," — not so, His; He made it, He 
gave the light, He grew the trees and flowers, 
He bathes them with dew and rain and sun- 
shine. He fans them with His cooling breath, 
He loans them for use and His loaning enriches 
earth and reflects Heaven. In the midst of it 
all I seemed as the High Priest of Nature, and 
offered audible and intelligent and grateful 
praise in befitting words. 

The whole long day was as perfect as even 
ruled. A cloudless sky, a thoroughly oxygen- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 209 

ated atmosphere, the weathervane northwest, 
and sunlight in endless profusion; and because 
of it everything and being was transfused with 
gladness. I confess to the merest bit of sym- 
pathy with the impressionists when I see and 
feel such a day. It was a day when the one 
overpowering and irresisting thing in all the 
landscape was light — blessed, blissful sunlight. 
The very atmosphere palpitated with celestial 
brilliance. The light seemed to take on the 
form of a reigning goddess and every possible 
shadow fled abashed; she sat as queen enthroned 
in sky and air of earth, and light wreathed and 
decorated her with gorgeous festoonings. How 
like the Hebrew poet's conception of Jehovah, 
"Thou coverest Thyself with light as with a 
garment." The garden and the fields glowed 
as in a furnace. The hills seemed as islands 
floating in a sea of light; the mirage was com- 
plete in its deception and weird in its picturing. 
I was as one that dreamed and saw visions and 
experienced trances. My spirit bathed in golden 
and purple floods. Even Nature herself had 
imbibed so freely of this exhilarating sunlight 
she was dazed, overpowered, as we have seen 
bees and butterflies bewildered after sipping 
long of honey. O the vision of it all, the feel* 



2io THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ing of it, the glory of it, the hallowed memory 
of it! 

But this day, like other days, was passing. 
The fulness of the flood was spent, the deep, 
rich light was slowly waning, the sunbeams were 
lessening in length, the afterglow was fading, 
every faculty sensed the surcease. The molten 
west that had gathered into itself the ebbing 
tide of this sunset was creating panoramic 
paintings most charming to eye and mind. The 
eastern sky grew dull and duller and colder 
and darker, and beauty faded from every land- 
scape. The sun had gone and his glory van- 
ished. 

"Blue bloom had fled the distant hill, 
Mystic grays the mid-air fill, 
The low winds have their cooling play; 
Farewell to the passing day, 
Evening is on her way. }> 



MY LAST FIELD DAY. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MY LAST FIELD-DAY. 

My special field day came June 13th. In 
some way the day had been left without any 
plan, left to be filled as feelings dictated. On 
such days, conditions favoring, we take to ihe 
"old pasture" for it is ever rich in just the treas- 
ures the nature lover seeks and prizes. Though 
familiar with every path and nook and tree 
and shrub, we always happen on choice finds. 
The day was built for the occasion and the oc- 
casion was equal to the demand, and this was 
inspiration enough. My old "field friend" for 
such trips was out in California, so I went alone. 
There is a bit of selfish luxury in personal law- 
lessness on such tramps. For I could walk or 
sit, studying birds or squirrels or flowers or 
clouds, and take no note of place or time. I 
had no gun, that were a murderous weapon, 
only a field glass and note book and two 
sharpened fabers and a generous lunch, for one 
does not get so hungry on an all-day tramp. 
I took the early trolley and rode out three 
miles to the old "Corbin place," crossed the 

213 



214 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

meadow and entered the pasture made familiar 
by a score of visits. There is always a newness 
even in old paths, always something I have not 
seen before, for flowers and birds are never « 
twice alike. \ 

What Nature lover cares whither an old and 
weedy foot-path leads while out on a pleasure 
hunt. The charm is in the path itself and what 
it offers. If it is zizag about great boulders, 
over hills and through swales, skirting groups 
of alders and willows, following the brook, ap- 
parently going nowhere, yet revealing new finds 
or disclosing some old ones, it is enough. 

Standing on an old stump and looking about 
I soon found new material for my note book, 
and while making a sketch of a new flower and 
jotting down its conditions and impressions, 
there came a strange bird call and then its song 
in most rapid notes, a little confusing at times 
but so rich and flexible ; it proved the Orchard 
Oriole, a rare bird in our state, not so gaily 
dressed as his cousin the Baltimore Oriole, but 
his song is far richer in tone and more finished 
in character. My field glass brought him plainly 
to sight and his song seemed the richer. Over- 
head flew a Crow with two Kingbirds in chase. 
Poor fellow, he was utterly worsted, his dodg- 
ings were clumsy and useless, they plucked him 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 215 

unmercifully and he cried for quarters but I 
doubt he got them. The King birds were hardly 
back on their watch tower ere a luckless Hawk 
appeared within their self-appointed district 
and away they flew after him. It was a livelier 
skirmish but an unequal battle from the start. 
The Kingbird is a born fighter and for some 
harsh reason takes life too seriously and has 
brought upon himself a bad name ; a fighter he 
is but not a bully, and gives battle only, as he 
thinks, in a just cause. 

Often have I wished that I were a skilled 
ornithologist, an expert in detecting the signifi- 
cance of all bird calls, and easily following the 
intricate and swift windings and variations of 
their songs, and knew at sight their dress color 
and just where and when to find them. So have 
I wished I were a master botanist, for Nature 
is so prolific in these old pastures ; but I am so 
grateful for this deep Nature love and some 
good degree of scientific and practical knowl- 
edge. 

This many-acred pasture is in a half state of 
untamed wildness, thick undergrowths cover 
large patches, here and there are great trees, 
hillocks, hummocks and rocks, stumps and old 
first growth of pine logs gradually decaying, 
you wander at will having a sort of delightful 



2i6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

lost feeling but not anxious as long as birds and 
flowers are in evidence; and then you are sure 
of coming upon house or barn, or cultivated 
field, meeting laborer or cow-boy or berry-pick- 
er, and can ask the nearest way out. There is a 
genuine pleasure hunting in every possible niche 
for some wild flower that has long escaped you, 
and then snug up to some old log or sheltered 
rock or brook's bank or out in the open sud- 
denly finding a perfect specimen, sepals and 
petals and pistils and stamen and color and 
striation, everything just right. While in the 
ecstasy of that floral find to hear the most ex- 
travagant song that a Warbling Vireo can utter 
is full enough for a whole day; that sweet 
toned "te-tee-yu-wh'tee," and ever so much 
more undefinable repeated o'er and o'er with 
most delicate modifications so characteristic of 
the warbler, and ending with that high-up note 
"tweet," it seems to vibrate in pulsating circles 
like the strains of a high-keyed aeolian harp. 
This is the sweetest warbler of the forest or 
field. 

Just at lunch hour I fortunately came upon 
a rail fence, a rough, crooked fence of primitive 
type and times. It was thoroughly poetic and 
artistic, it looked it and its belongings empha- 
sized the look. For thirty years it has stood 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 217 

here and served and taken on its weather col- 
oring, a gray satin-like tinge ; in places covered 
with mosses and lichens, no two rails alike, split 
irregularly but related and built in together. 
The rail fence is wholly American; no other 
country has them, it is the relic of a lavish era 
of unlimited forestry. I wonder who invented 
it? Who was the first rail-splitter? What a fence 
for weeds and bushes and vines and shrubbery. 
Its corners have been dumping grounds of farm- 
ing odds and ends for a generation but what a 
paradise for squirrels and chipmunks and birds 
and bees. The plow cannot reach these stored 
corners, the mower dreads them and keeps 
aloof. Berry boys and girls know these choice 
spots and how to fill their pails. I sat on the 
old fence and thought back into the past. I 
looked on the stones and rubbish and bushes 
and trees, heard bircj singings and bee hum- 
mings and squirrel scoldings, and what a fitting 
picture for poet and painter ! I drew forth my 
lunch and began to distribute to the birds and 
squirrels and chipmunks and bees and butterflies 
and caterpillars and myself — all ate and were 
filled. How quickly I made friends with them 
all, the squirrels ceased scolding me, the birds 
no longer eyed me suspiciously but came closer 
and coaxed and coaxed for more. One little 



218 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

housewren sat on my knee and got a good bit 
of bread and flew away over yonder into the 
bushes where was a nest of hungry little ones. 
Ah! the joy of that half hour lunch, just thir- 
teen of us, and we have not quarrelled since ! 
How the children enjoyed the story and wanted 
to go with me next time. You cannot hunt 
birds and wild flowers with an attending gang 
of roistering boys and girls. For a moment 
they hunt and then dash off on a tangent wild 
and hilarious. I certainly should catch their 
spirit and chase after them. 

At right angles with this old rail fence is an 
older stone wall. Mr. Corbin told me it was 
over a hundred years old and laid by his grand- 
father. What solid, hard days of work in these 
fences and trees, they were built and planted 
by a hardier race than now exists. Over yonder 
to the left of the house is the stony outline of 
the first log cabin with its heavy log fencing a 
protection from wolves and bears and Indians ; 
arrow heads and tomahawks have been plowed 
up in the meadow. Full of interest the old- 
fashioned lanes leading up to the house from 
the main road stone-walled, wide enough for 
two teams abreast, lined with maples and elms 
and interspersed with berry bushes and thistles 
and burdocks and clematis and poison-ivy and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 219 

bitter-sweet. What a race track for barefooted 
boys and dogs, how refreshing the shade in 
summer, how long and dismal in dark nights — 
but they are only a memory. 

I am fond of wild flowers. This love was 
born in me and like good things has come to a 
passion. Nature must love them for she is won- 
drous prolific and reckons her varieties by the 
thousand. This old pasture is a floral hot-bed. 
Down on my knees before that little hillock, 
whose surface is not more than four square feet, 
I counted twenty varieties ! It is a pleasure to 
find and gather them and take them home and 
plant in conspicuous places, arranging carelessly 
mingling grasses and sprays and twigs, and then 
to my callers talk about them creating extra 
pleasure. They never lose their interest. How 
well we remember them when a boy, we hunted 
and found and bent lovingly over them, sniffing 
their fragrance, calling them by some imaginary 
name, not knowing their real one, and bearing 
samples tenderly home to mother, who was 
very fond of them. These flowers were pictured 
to my vivid imagination, they were symbols of 
thought. One flower I called the "Star" 
(Bluet) because of its four petaled calyx; other 
pet names were the "East" (asters), "King- 
dom" (mountain laurel) so kingly, "Daylight" 



220 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

(honey-suckle), " Night-beauty " (evening 
primrose), "Preacher" (Jack in the Pulpit), 
"Jerusalem" (the wild yellow lily), sometimes 
called the "Golden Candlestick," etc. How 
well I remember the wild flower air, how sweet 
and pungent its aroma and how subtle and per- 
meating, how it used to thrill every sense ting- 
ling to the tips of my being. Many a time have 
I lain flat on the ground and looked earnestly 
and long at the beautiful little flowers and won- 
dered and wondered how they were made and 
why, so many and so rich in endless variety, 
fairly entranced with their beauty and fra- 
grance, brain and heart hot with problems, not 
yet solved but understood. So Tennyson 
thought and felt and wrote, 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I plucked you out of the crannies; 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — hut if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

Bayard Taylor in one of his travel-books 
speaks of the old Thuringian forester, who in 
his boyhood was so happy in the beautiful sun- 
light he did not know what to do with himself. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 221 

When out in the fields seeing and sniffing he 
would throw himself down on the grass and roll 
over and over fairly crazy with joy. All that 
was often mine when alone afield. I have 
shouted and sung and cried and laughed in the 
excess of joy because everything was so beauti- 
ful and made me so happy. It does still, though 
in a more subdued way, yet the old thrill is not 
altogether wanting. There is a joy in the same 
old fields and paths that I have gone over a 
score of times, yonder is the same clump of 
pines, stately and restful, same ledge of rocks 
with its oozing of clearest coolest water, the 
same brook still running on babbling its cheery 
music, same ferns so fresh and inviting, same 
wild flowers, I could find them in the dark or 
trace them by their distinct fragrances ; I knew 
where was the best trailing Arbutus and Spring 
Beauty and where the finest wintergreens ; yes, I 
knew it all, but ever had a peculiar joy in revis- 
iting old spots and retouching old flowers and 
refeeling the old-time delights. 

My field day was richly diversified; one of 
the events was a brush fire. I have collected 
many such brush and rubbish heaps and burned 
them, but this fire I had nothing to do with but 
watch and enjoy. There was a gathered heap 
of brush and stumps, withered grass and leaves. 



222 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

just on the meadow edge of the pasture. I was 
but a few rods away when the fire started and 
saw the first dark, thick smoke roll lazily up 
and spread out like an umbrella. The dark and 
light masses of smoke blended so singularly and 
assumed so many forms which were highly pic- 
torial, my attention was arrested, and sitting 
upon a large boulder I watched it. There was 
little air stirring, not enough to break up the 
clouds and columns that rose so rapidly by the 
ascending heat, but just enough with its deft fin- 
gers to wreathe and twist and twine them into 
grotesque and startling forms and images and 
give most singular and suggestive combinations.. 
Beautiful indeed these columnar masses rolling 
upward and imaged on the bright azure sky be- 
yond. In them we saw forests and mountains, 
and armies and navies, great flocks of birds 
migrating, herds of bison as they have been pic- 
tured, in fact anything and everything ever ex- 
perienced seemed reproduced. Imagination was 
wild with its picturings ! What memories were 
called up. What forces acted and scenes re- 
enacted. Our moods took in the facts and 
every faculty revelled for half a hour. 

The firemen attended, and would occasion- 
ally stir the heap, throwing on gathered masses 
of combustible material, and what showers of 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 223 

sparks would rise and diamond the clouds in 
extra brilliance ! Had it been night what a showy 
pyrotechnic display. What types of evanes- 
cence, changing, capricious, weightless — evan- 
ished! Like and yet unlike the clouds; clouds 
oft have angles, smoke is always in curves; on 
the wind-side clouds edged and frilled, but the 
tenuity of smoke forbids this, clouds cling to- 
gether and roll on in great masses, ordinary 
smoke lacks cohesion and disintegrates. Yet 
often have we noticed the soft coal smoke from 
an ocean steamer far out at sea rolling on and 
clinging together for miles, reaching out over 
the waters like some black demon. 

The brush heap had burned down, boyhood 
memories like fairies had fled, imagination had 
luxuriated in a wild revel and spent its ener- 
gies; I was rested and refreshed and sought the 
pasture's side-hill. 



*t 



Only a bank of simple weeds, 

Of tangled grass and slender wind-blown 

reeds. 
And yet a world of beauty garners there!' 

At once the Mulleins were in evidence. Like 
real sentries, tall and slim, standing guard over 
nothing. What lazy work, poor mulleins, once 



224 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

we loved them and thought them soldiers, and 
in heart we do so still. I wonder does a boy 
ever get quite over his boyish likes and loves ; do 
they not all crop out sooner or later? I confess 
mine do, and I am heartily glad of it; it helps 
the proof of identity in spite of the seven-year 
rule. But those mulleins, artists and poets love 
them and celebrate them; and really they are 
always picturesque. I have seen them in Ger- 
many, in their gardens labelled "American Vel- 
vet Plant," and have been asked to note its vel- 
vety leaves and so they are here in this pasture. 
How solemn they look on patrol duty, the squad 
is small, but they hold me by those invisible 
memory chords and I enjoy them; and so will 
you if you study leaf and structure and take 
home the flowering stalk and put it in water 
and let it flower and for a week cheer you with 
its fairy blossoms. 

On this side-hill were Milk-weeds, also 
friends, for what boy or girl has not played with 
its silken blossoms, gathering them for pillows 
or dolls' beds or letting loose the fluffy down and 
chasing to catch it again, or rubbed its milky 
juice on pesky warts. I thought I knew the 
milk-weed ; yes, I did know it as a savory spring 
relish under mother's cooking; I knew it as 
something relished by the ugly striped caterpil- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 225 

lar and the red butterflies that I had often 
picked from its blossoms, half tipsy from an 
overdose of its rich, thick nectar; yes, it was 
rash indeed in any one to say "I know the wild 
flowers," by sight one may point out the violet, 
orchid, anemone, columbine, prince's feather, 
or those charming everlastings that abound in 
our pastures and flavor the October atmosphere 
with the nut-like fragrance, but how few have 
ever taken the flower of the common milk-weed 
and put it under the microscope and seen its 
worlds of beauty excelling nine-tenths of the 
floral world! 

Sitting here on this hill-side fully exposed to 
the sun, I spy a belated strawberry, how luscious 
it looked and what a prize. Shall I save it and 
take it home? No! Can't resist the old re- 
membered taste and boy-like thought "a bird in 
hand is worth two in the bush," and ate it — 
Jack Horner. Its exquisite taste gave a thrill 
of pleasure, no berry its equal, no palate-delight 
can compare with it. Was there ever so much 
sweetness packed into such an attractive com- 
pass? No wonder the world is enamored of 
the strawberry — it is easily queen of the whole 
berry field. The garden-growths exceed it in 
size but never in flavor. They are surely re- 
lated and we could not well spare either. At 



226 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the tea table with full plates, so generous and 
fresh, and in the presence of genial company 
we descant upon its wonderful qualities and the 
perfection to which the horticulturist's art has 
brought it. How singularly that one straw- 
berry on the hill awoke the old memories of 
former days and opened up magic vistas and I 
saw my own boyself with others in the berry 
field — a roistering urchin crowd, picking and 
lunching and story-telling and laughing. 

Down below me in this wild pasture rasp- 
berry and blackberry bushes full of promise for 
large harvests. List for a moment as I relate 
an experience from some of those red-letter 
days in the berrying field. We took baskets 
and pails and straps and the dog; dressed in 
old clothes, straw hats and gingham bonnets 
and out for fun and berries ; what chatting and 
bragging and punning and giggling and noisy 
shouts, having a good time just as young people 
do to-day. The memory of those faces and 
dresses and voices haunts me pleasurably. We 
struck out through meadows into open fields 
where was a cross old bull, and we had to watch 
out for him and often take to our heels. The 
berry field was large ; here were cow paths and 
no paths, down in the glens along the brook, 
up on side hills, near great rocks lichen covered 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 12? 

full of picturesque interest, trees here and there 
like sentinels marking points to go by, decayed 
logs from primeval forests and dating back to 
the original axeman, bushes in large clumps 
loaded with berries. How we set to work with 
a will, vowing not to taste a berry until lunch 
hour. Ah ! how that first berry sounded in our 
pail — it is music yet in thought and heart; not 
a word spoken, busy picking, picking for dear 
life as to who should have most at lunch time. 
Noon hour came too soon, and there on the hill, 
under a wide-spreading elm, we sat and lunched 
and rested — it was one of the times of our life. 
The dog is barking down by the old pine, he 
has treed a squirrel and would let us know it. 
Farther up the hill a woodchuck comes out of 
his hole and stands on his hind legs and looks 
about. He heard the dog but is not disturbed. 
One of the boys has learned from a hunter the 
"woodchuck call" and utters it and he comes to- 
ward us, we throw him a crust and he is grate- 
ful. A half-dozen cows come to the brook to 
drink and stand in it and cool off and chew their 
cud contentedly. Old Brindle, so tame, comes 
up the hill for tid-bits and gets them. She al- 
lows us to pat her — and milk her. The birds 
fairly flock into this berry field for their lunches, 



228 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

they eat rapaciously for it is their rightful prop- 
erty. 

So it all used to be ! Now we go berrying in 
the garden and pick our fill of luscious straw- 
berries in beds, raspberries and blackberries are 
laid out in rows and staked and grow tall and 
laden with the best. This modern garden 
berrying is like a school, for you are ever study- 
ing how it all came about and what the cost of 
fertilizers and cultivation and handling for the 
markets. All so different from what it was 
back in the ^o's up in Vermont. 

How full of choice lessons that day in the old 
pasture ; how treasured its visions and memories 
and experiences! 

"Give me the gospel of the fields and woods — 
The sermons written in the book of books; 
The sweet communion of the things of earth 
Fresh with the warm baptism of the sun. 
Give me the offertory of bud and bloom, 
The perfect caroling of happy birds. 
Give me the creed of one of God y s fair days 
Wrought in the beauty of its loveliness; 
And then, the benediction of the stars. 
His eloquent ministers of the night. y} 

Aye, give this, all this, but give me more— • 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 229 

His Presence, and then Nature blends best and 
to purpose with Super-nature. 



POETS AS INTERPRETERS OF 
NATURE. 



CHAPTER XV. 

POETS AS INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 

In our library are many volumes of the best 
poets. They bear good evidence of having 
been read. The so-called "Poets' Corner" — 
the southeast corner — is really the cosiest spot 
in the room, its easy chair is the invitingest. 
Ruth has a way of coming from a call or shop- 
ping and before removing her things, occupying 
this easy chair and reaching out for her favorite 
poetic books, indulges or rather revels in them. 
She says it rests her and helps to "collect her- 
self." Her looks declare it. She does not 
read much at such times — a few lines or verses 
ere her vision is far away, and brain and soul 
are mingled in thought and feeling and luxuriat- 
ing to the full. 

Well do we know what rest and refreshment 
a book can give one in a few minutes ! There 
is an exquisite mental relish in taking up a fa- 
vorite author and re-reading for the fiftieth 
time passages your soul fairly revels in, and 
every time you read them the old visions and 
inspirations come again, mayhap not just the 

233 



234 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

same, but still the old quality is there and the 
indulgence is delightful. 

There is no need to discuss the relation of 
poetry to life, since poetry is the expression of 
life in its best and highest possibilities. Its 
function is not only to give pleasure, but inspira- 
tion. All great poetry is the utterance of the 
individual genius, half inspired, half insane, 
if you will as if beside himself, careless of that 
prodigality of giving the rarest and best in the 
utter abandon of soul, and pouring song forth 
as nightingales sing — in luxurious frenzy. All 
the centuries have given the world but few real- 
ly great poets, poets of the brand of Homer 
and Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and 
Wordsworth. Our generation may not bring 
forth another great poet, but other generations 
will, and they will find new themes or feel the 
old ones in new ways with new imagery and 
poetic fire. Prose cannot perform the func- 
tion of poetry no more than a work horse can 
match the thoroughbred racer. 

The poet was ever the great man of an- 
tiquity, ever moulding into expression the higher 
moral conceptions, the religious longings and 
imaginations, the deep and far-seeing visions of 
truth. He stirred to enthusiasm and patriot- 
ism and religious fervor. He inspired hope 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 235 

and courage. He was justified in his use of all 
the resources of form and diction and license 
because his message was great and noble and 
must embody itself somehow. Deep and strong 
emotions demand corresponding words and 
thoughts. 

The mission of poetry is to invigorate the 
imagination, to cherish ideals and purify the 
fountain of emotions. Imagination is as vital 
to the mental being as blood to the physical, 
the intellect feeds upon it and is nourished by 
it. The intellect accumulates, the emotions as- 
similate and the imagination clarifies and in- 
tensifies. It is the beginning of wisdom to 
know, the culmination of wisdom to feel. What 
we learn we possess, what we feel we are. To 
cultivate the imagination is an essential means 
of progress and just here is the great office of 
all art, especially poetry. Nature herself is one 
perpetual struggle toward form and rhythm 
and beauty. The true poetic spirit senses this 
and seeks its expression. Hence the poet is 
the truest interpreter of Nature as it appeals to 
us ; and he alone kindles into whitest flame this 
wonderful power of imagination. He speaks 
what many have felt but only he could say. 
He opens the great secrecies and lays bare un- 
recognized experiences and unrealized capaci- 



336 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ties of feeling. He fixes the joy of the passing 
moment and makes the evasive emotion a min- 
istry of untold pleasure. 

The poet is optimistic and preserves the 
optimism of the race. His utterances are the 
world's best ideas and purest ideals. Thought 
is not created in the market-places, emotion is 
not cultured in the crowded thoroughfares, nay, 
but alone and apart, with Nature and God, and 
soul laid bare to every possible influence. Here 
is where the human spirit touches life and takes 
on power to think and love, and necessarily be- 
comes a part of the beautiful, the true and the 
good. And so the real poet opens the eye and 
ear to the loveliest in earth and sky and sea and 
forest and flower. He dowers the race with 
his peerless and priceless gifts. 

What lovers of Nature the poets are ! What 
insight into its wondrous arcana is theirs! 
What revelations of its riches of beauty are 
made, and what loyal and loving testimony of 
the Creator's kindly care of it all ! 

Wordsworth called poetry "the breath and 
finer spirit of all knowledge, immortal as the 
heart of man." Poetry is the blossom and 
fragrance of all human thoughts and passions. 
It ever contemplates three objects: Man, Na- 
ture and God. Nature first arouses the poetic 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 237 

spirit, and is ever dominant as an inspirer. A 
glance at the leading poets will deeply impress 
two thoughts, the most vital in all their pages — 
the constant recognition of God and Nature. 
All truth carries ever the emotional element in 
it, and it is the province of poetry to find it and 
turn it on the heart, and so ever is the poet 
trained to be a 



a 



Watcher of those still reports 

Which Nature utters from her rural springs/* 



The deeper tones that lie in the silences of 
Nature will be all but inaudible unless there is 
heard the responsive music of the heart. 
Herein is the poet's power — the inward thrill- 
ing and melody. Hence poets are in many re- 
spects our best naturalists. They are alert, im- 
pressionable and sympathetic. They see and 
feel and voice their feelings. We call it inspi- 
ration, and so it is. It appeals to us as from 
another world and reveals things hidden, and 
interprets its deeper thoughts. When Shelley 
interpreted the song of the skylark and Keats 
that of the nightingale, and embodied them in 
matchless verse, it was but the sublimer feel- 
ings of the living poets. They heard and saw 
and felt and wrote their thrills as best they 



238 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

could, and lo! they were poems, forever im- 
mortal because torn from the palpitating hearts 
of genius. 

Nature needs the living genius as her inter- 
preter, for only the soul of man divinely 
touched can divine the soul of Nature. She 
finds the poet most susceptible to her appeals 
and elects him as her mouthpiece, and ever his 
trick is to idealize her, personify her and gift 
her with eloquence of speech. You cannot find 
what the poet finds in the fields, and woods, un- 
til you take the poet's heart thither. He sees 
wondrous things, sees them truthfully because 
they exist, but adds the indescribable aureola of 
his own emotional spirit. A tree, a flower, a 
bird, a cloud, a sunset have no strange and hid- 
den meanings, no meanings they are not ever 
ready to impart to any one wisely visioning and 
interrogating. 

The poet gets the first insight because that is 
his gift, he is a seer; he is an interpreter, and 
that is his mission. Interpreters differ, and 
rightly, because the soul has an infinite gamut 
of feeling. Milton's Nightingale is not that of 
Keats; Burns' daisy is not Wordsworth's; Tur- 
ner does not see what Titian sees; Veronese 
does not paint as Correggio ; Millet paints peas- 
antry as no other, and Corot creates his light as 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 239 

a master, and yet the vision of each is true, and 
the poems and paintings are right and in pro- 
foundest sympathy with Nature at her best, 
but right and beautiful from individual stand- 
points. 

Poetic study will always arouse the feelings 
and fire the emotions, awaken memories and in- 
tensify longings. All such study widens and 
beautifies one's outlook, compels more careful 
attention, vivifies the law of association and 
puts a richer vocabulary at the disposal of high- 
wrought passions. A true poetic passion is 
noble strength on fire; this is the passion of 
great natures — and it is to this that Nature ever 
appeals, for Nature herself is one perpetuated 
struggle toward form and rhythm and beauty. 
The poetic spirit senses it and is charmed with 
it, speaks as if it were perfect in rhythmic tones 
and color. Wordsworth felt this wondrous 
passion and populated his worlds with imagin- 
ary beings and conditions — and yet they were 
all real! 

The poets are not infallible, they often trip 
in the details. A prominent New England poet 
speaks of plucking the apple from the pine as 
if a pineapple grew on a pine. One speaks of 
Humming-birds' eggs as blue, evidently for the 
sake of rhyme. Another finds in our State 



240 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the Snow-Drop and the early Primrose bloom- 
ing along the streams, with the orchid and yel- 
low violet and the Blackbird conspicuous as a 
singer! Shakespeare was ever painstaking in 
his use of Nature, as in everything else. His 
allusions to natural objects are always inciden- 
tal to his purposes, but they reveal the loving 
and careful observer. Trowbridge mentions 
the Pewee, Blue Bird, Oriole, Robin, Bobolink, 
Thrush, Grouse, Kingfisher and others and 
every one is accurately noted in color and song 
and habit. His "Pewee" is a most popular 
bird poem and true to the bird. Emerson is 
exact in all his references, and so abundant are 
they one may almost study our flora and fauna 
in his pages. His "Tit-Mouse" is a pet study 
in our winter woods, and his "Humble-Bee" in 
our summer fields. How he loves the pine tree, 
he sees more of its delightful mysteries and life 
than any poet or naturalist; his "May-Day" is 
abounding in spring sounds and tokens. Both 
Bryant and Longfellow put the Spring Blue 
Bird high up in the lofty elms but that place be- 
longs to the Oriole and Robin, the Blue Bird 
prefers a humbler perch. Lowell has him on a 
post in the fence. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 241 

"The Blue Bird shifting his light burden of 
song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence/* 

Whittier gets very close to the heart of Na- 
ture and rarely sounds a false note. His allu- 
sions to the flowers are manifold and so beauti- 
fully correct we never question him; he was 
reared in the country. How joyously he pets 
the aster, crocus, eglantine, golden rod, hare- 
bell, lilac, lily, orchid, pansy, primrose and so 
many others. His poems are fragrant with 
flowers and fields. "Snow Bound" is the most 
faithful picture of our Northern winter that 
has been put into poetry. 

These are the defects or excellencies of edu- 
cation and should be so regarded. They are 
not in any way chargeable to the poetic spirit, 
and they neither make nor mar the poem. There 
are times when the poet is so wrapt in his vision 
and so inspired with his theme he does not think 
of details and orders and exact conditions and 
correspondences, but takes out of Nature just 
what color he will and what flower that pleases 
and what season that suits his thought and plan, 
and flings them all into his verse and his poem 
thrills — because it thrilled him. As an instance 
at hand, take that remarkable poem of John 



242 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

Milton, "Lycidas," one of his earlier produc- 
tions, and what a singular grouping of flowers 
and seasons irrespective of time or place, or 
order; it was Nature just as it grew in old Eng- 
land, just as he had seen it hundreds of times 
and knew it all perfectly, and he used it to illus- 
trate his subject as it pleased him and made it 
one of the most perfect poems in the English 
tongue ! Who that loves poetry thinks or cares 
about the exact season of those flowers, or the 
places where they blossomed or just the week 
when certain birds came. No one save the lit- 
tle critic, but the all-important thought is con- 
cerning the swing and sweep of that grand 
poem. You may call it poetic license, so it is, 
but it is more, it is the free use of Nature's 
wealth of material just when and how and as it 
best suits his poetic spirit and his sublime vision 
of just what he would create. 

Nature is ever impressive and full of rich 
suggestion. Truth and beauty are everywhere 
and in rich variety. It is the poetic spirit that 
perceives and feels and interprets because so 
sympathetic with its endless moods. The 
sculptor interprets his own ideal and carves it 
out of the marble. *Tis the soul's own music 
that stirs deepest feelings and compels song and 
instrument to aid in expression. The outward 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 243 

oft awakes and evokes one's strongest powers. 
Music started wondrous emotions in the soul 
of Laura Dearborn, the heroine of "The Pit." 
That Egyptian Memnon emitting music at sun- 
rise was no myth ; rather, it was an effort to ex- 
press soul inspiration at early dawn. 

We are not here simply to be played on, but 
we are played on and our "harp of a thousand 
strings" vibrates most responsively to the deli- 
cate touches of Nature and Spirit. We carry 
within us the wonders we find without. Bryant 
has phrased it finely — 

"Yet these sweet sounds of early season 
And these fair sights of its early days, 
Are only sweet when we fondly listen, 
And only fair when we fondly gaze." 

I surely find my own complexion everywhere 
in Nature. It is a mirror and more, almost an 
"eidon." Wordsworth speaks of 

"The light that never was on sea or land." 
That light is really what we mean by the poetic 
interpretation of Nature. It is not true that 
Nature is a blank, an unintelligible scroll with 
no meaning of its own, no positive personality; 
it was beautiful in form and finish long ere poet 
was born to see it and feel it — always beautiful 



244 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

and always will be beautiful, for He made it. 
The poet sees it and his thoughts flow rhythmic- 
ally full of emotion and power. The poet gives 
more than he took, but he took and what he 
took was inspiration. 

We have poets to-day, readable, thoughtful, 
enjoyable, but they make no impression, com- 
mand no following, do not meet the felt de- 
mand of soul. The real poet is a marvel. He 
possesses those rare, subtle, indefinable qualities 
that mere training and education cannot bestow, 
qualities that often defy environment and yet 
so pure and delicate and positive that it is easy 
to understand the old Latin definition, "poeta 
nascitur" — a heaven-born gift. 

Ruskin has furnished us a most happy 
phrase, "feeling the power of life." In his 
ideal, life is rhythmic, a poem set to music, 
pitched to the key of the infinite, its grace notes 
were the sublime, the beautiful, the good and 
true. He ever saw 

"God's world bathed in Beauty, 
God's world steeped in Light." 

How reverently he sets the voice of gale and 
tongue of flower telling the power of God. He 
makes us see the gorgeous curtains of the 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 245 

Tabernacle which God pitches in the heavens 
for the sun and the splendors of His own mar- 
vellously pavilioned abode. He sublimates the 
very dust, makes the stone tell of the great 
mountain, shows us how the sky with almost 
human passion and spiritual tenderness and di- 
vine humility keeps telling the Creator's glory. 
He had no patience with the scientists who 
could not see and feel and know God, as He 
speaks and acts through Nature. He disliked 
Tyndall and loved Linnaeus. As a child three 
years old, standing for his portrait, he was 
asked what he would like for a background, 
and answered, "blue hills. " Surely he was 
born in tune with Nature. We wonder not 
that he was the greatest writer on Art in the 
Victorian age and the founder of art criticism. 
He opened the world of art more than any one 
before him. He taught the whole world to 
read Nature and art in a common alphabet as 
Truth and Beauty. 

The poetry of to-day is not written because 
it must be, but because it can be. It is certain- 
ly pure and wholesome in tone, refinement, 
grace and charm, indeed possessing all the 
marks of careful culture based in many cases on 
a sympathetic acquaintance with literature. It 
is the work of art and nothing but art, with no 



246 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

rooting into life, national or individual. Its 
themes have a wearying sameness in tone and 
spirit. The future of American poetry is no: 
bright and beckoning, and criticism is not con- 
cerned with prophecy. The law of reaction will 
express itself, it must, just when or in what way 
it is not possible to affirm. The seriously ener- 
getic thinking and working of the present are 
manifestly along scientific and commercial lines. 
Everywhere the spirit of investigation, analysis, 
and criticism is rife in material interests. The 
material is dominant. Commerce is king. This 
nation is pre-eminently a commercial nation. 
The prevalence and dominance of this spirit is 
subversive and retardative of the higher facul- 
ties which do not easily fertilize in such soil. 
The demand for the poet grows deeper and 
stronger. If he comes he will have a cordial 
greeting and the material was never so amply 
at hand. 



A MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCE. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCE. 

It all came about this way: Ruth and 
I needed a vacation. Our good Dr. L. said 
that we needed the mountain rather than the 
sea. So I brought home the ordinary moun- 
tain literature from the office and, securing the 
loan of a guide book or two, we sat down after 
tea to look and study and map out routes and 
figure and determine; in two hours we had set- 
tled the affair and a week later were whirling 
away up into Vermont for a fortnight's invigor- 
ation amid her unrivalled mountain scenery. I 
was heartily glad the doctor suggested moun- 
tains, for what he orders seems to ease up con- 
ditions and opens doors of exit and closes 
those of care. My love for mountain scenery 
dates from early boyhood; there were none 
near, but seen at a distance and were intensely 
enchanting. An important factor in this early 
mountain love was a "hired man" who had long 
lived in the White and Green Mountains, chop- 
ping and logging during winters, and being a 
natural story-teller he thrilled and edified us 

249 



250 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

boys and girls with lumbering and hunting 
stories, and reminiscent personal experiences. 
They linger yet in memory. 

Early in my teens I read Headley's "Sacred 
Mountains," to me then a wonderful book be- 
cause so poetic and devout in spirit and so vivid 
in description; afterwards Ruskin's "Modern 
Painters," books for the ages ! Then came a 
tramping trip in the northern part of these 
Green Mountains, later in the Alps and up 
Mont Blanc, then over the Alleghanies and out 
to the Rockies. 

There is something about the grandeur and 
solemnity of mountains, so lifted above and 
apart from the world social and commercial, 
so in touch with the very heavens, they ever 
command my admiration and reverence, and 
unconsciously I uncover in their presence. Their 
clear, bracing air, rugged and dizzy heights, 
grewsome gorges, densest shadows, awful si- 
lences, conspire to inspire. If we worshipped 
any visible thing, as a god, it would surely be 
the sun, and we would make the mountains his 
earth-thrones, their deep recesses his hiding 
places, their dense forests his altars and for in- 
cense the low trailing clouds. Legendary lore 
clings to the world's great mountain peaks, for 
religion has peopled them with deities and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 251 

demons. Did not Jehovah enthrone himself 
on Sinai, and transfigure himself on Hermon, 
and teach on the Beatitudes? Was not Olym- 
pus the fabled abode of the Greek gods? Did 
they not sacrifice on "high places," and in sa- 
cred groves along the mountain side? 

It is not strange that men love the great 
mountains. Are they not the climbers toward 
the dawn, the world's uplifted response to the 
skies, do they not spell out the royalest mean- 
ing for life? Surely they have caught the eyes 
and imagination of the race. They have sug- 
gested God and Heaven as accessible, and have 
summoned men to come up higher and take in 
visions of soul inspiration. 

Mountains and oceans are God's factories 
where He manufactures the purest atmospheres, 
extraly oxygenating them and from thence dif- 
fusing for the healing and health of the race. 
It is hardly possible not to personify a moun- 
tain. They are so large and generous and 
sympathetic ; they are more than things. Most 
of the world's great peaks bear the names of 
eminent men and by the law of association we 
individualize them and feel their personality. 
They talk to me as only nature can with a sym- 
pathetic heart. They oft enwrap themselves 
in clouds as if for repose, terrific storms are 



252 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

their bath seasons, the winds are cooling and 
cleansing, the snows are their wrappings for 
winter's warmth. What lessons, what books, 
what portfolios of endless pictures, what ap- 
peals to mind and heart in beauty and power! 
For ages on ages they have stood alone in their 
solemn magnitude looking down on the passage 
of milleniums and up into the everlasting 
heavens— stood as hoary sentinels on stern duty 
and yet old as they are they were once young 
and giddy and skipped like lambs ; grey as they 
now are they were once grassy and green. 
There are small hillocks that were venerable 
when the Alps and Himalayas lay slumbering 
under half a mile of superincumbent ocean. 

What have the mountains for me? They 
have the deep-voiced organ tone of the rolling 
thunder as it reverberates among their craggy 
peaks. They speak to me of the higher levels, 
and beckon me to a grander life. They call 
me by the golden circles of their sunlit sum- 
mits to a glorified life. The wind makes of 
every tree a harp thrummed by unseen fingers. 
The sun writes on every fluttering leaf the trag- 
edies and comedies of human life. The birds 
key my heart to heaven's concert pitch and bid 
me sing of hope. The rocks relate their tale 
of catastrophy and cataclysm, and the fires leap 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 253 

from the flint, suggesting veiled mysteries be- 
neath and behind all that doth appear. The 
world is full of wonder. Happy is the soul 
trained to hear and see. 

I never weary on the mountains, nor of them. 
I breathe fuller and rarely suffer bodily fatigue, 
mind is clear and vigorous, memory swift- 
winged and tireless, imagination impetuous and 
daring in its flights, thinking is easy and full of 
satisfaction. One seems so close up to the 
spirit realm and every thought takes on the 
tinge of the upper and better. Here is free- 
dom, the dull and vile are gone, the blue ether 
is so near and pure and strong. The desire to 
be alone on these great heights is instinctive, 
numbers divide and distract, for there are times 
when the soul would commune with itself and 
the Infinite. Sights and silences are ever ar- 
restive and impressive, and thoughts grow large 
and holy. How blessed such mountain com- 
munion, how infinitely helpful in its spiritual 
undergirdings and uplifts and gratifications, 
giving a sort of transfiguration, a foretaste of 
what is its birthright and ultimate heritage. 
Yes, alone and not alone nor lonely. It is 
God's mountain picture gallery of His best 
handiwork and our joy in it is His pleasure. 
The Father and child meet on best vantage 



254 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

ground and there is inbreathed without inter- 
vention of person or symbolism the very atmos- 
phere of heaven and God! 

O mountains, great and grand, lofty and 
rugged, beautiful and sublime, dreamy and 
vigorous, "builded with the very masonry of 
God," watched by the everlasting stars, steeped 
in the sunshine of ages, wrapped with clouds as 
a mantle, swept with fierce tornadoes, washed 
with incessant storms, standing forth as great 
sentinels and landmarks for nations, ever send- 
ing down rich gifts to river and valley and man 
and beast — O lift our souls in gladness up into 
and beyond your heights that we may sense 
Him Who made us and gave us such inherit- 
ance! 

The need of mountain climbing in order to 
lift one up out of the dull monotony of daily 
life for the renewal of nerve energy grows im- 
perative, a closer touch with something great 
that life's little things may not worry and weary 
us. This climbing process is hard and harden- 
ing; it toughens fibre and knits muscles and yet 
is full of inspiration. If one wants new worlds 
for vision and conquest, let him climb moun- 
tains, up into the very treasure house of the 
skies, for Nature oft does her best work when 
nearest the stars. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 25$ 

But what a fortnight of rest and sleep and 
eating and tramping and exploring and sight- 
seeing. Day and night the great mountain 
was in evidence, and was felt and heard; in 
storms it roared, in winds it moaned, in sun- 
shine it fairly gleamed and glittered, in moon- 
light it seemed alive with fairies and dryads and 
oreads so weird and fascinating. Its flora and 
fauna and rocks and gorges and nooks and by- 
paths were sought out and experienced. We 
stood under its pines among whose tops the 
"sound of a going'* is ever heard; we climbed 
rugged rocks gray with unnumbered ages and 
anon walked under their shadows as beneath 
the walls of a frowning castle we could not 
enter; we sat on banks of moss intermingled 
with running ground pine ; we rambled along its 
laughing streams that were leaping boulders 
and scattering spray in wildest glee over preci- 
pices, and every day nerves were intoned and 
embedded and mind revelled in luxurious rest. 
Every turn in the roads, every walk in the 
woods, every summit climbed, every widening 
outlook over landscapes, gave ever new visions 
and new delights. The mornings and the eve- 
nings are the glories of the mountains. Then 
it is that light renders its best scenic displays, 
and how different the effect, like two different 



256 THROUGH LIBRARY WNIDOWS 

worlds lighted from separate supernal sources. 
The morning light is so wondtfously diffusive 
breaking out from all parts of the sky at once, 
giving a dawn of bewitching freshness. The 
evening light concentrates in the west and gor- 
geously illuminates only the trail of the depart- 
ing sun. The morning light is the diamond 
flash of excessive brilliance. The evening light 
is golden-hued and rich beyond wording. Each 
rivals the other, each in alternation carries the 
palm and there is no discord, only beauty! 

I resolved to climb the highest peak at this 
point and enjoy a sunset. I wanted to see and 
feel the slow overspreading shadows of night 
and sense to the fullest possible the everlasting 
miracle of day and night. I had ascended it 
twice before and was tolerably familiar with 
the roads and paths. The ascent was quite 
toilsome because I chose an unfrequented way 
and tugged over rocks and fallen trees and 
through underbrush, leaping the swift stream, 
and by dint of hard but enjoyable work, I 
reached my coveted spot about two hours be- 
fore sunset. The peak was a jutting crag of 
grey limestone carved and polished apparently 
for sight-seeing pilgrims. The scene before 
and around me was grand and inspiring, well 
worth a score of such struggles as I had put 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 257 

forth to secure. There lay the quiet valleys in 
the delicate haze of a dreamy and ideal August 
day. The contour of the mountain range at 
this point was peculiar and admitted a full 
south and east view, and on the west they were 
pushed quite back and much lower for a mile or 
so towards the south. There had been in the 
remote past a terrific conflict of glacier with 
glacier and they had plowed about wildly and 
left a most generous plain. Through its centre 
rolled zig-zag the mountain stream, now hid- 
den by willows and alders that lined its banks, 
now open to view and flashing back a cheery sil- 
very light. A little village of white painted 
houses snuggled into this hollowed out space 
beautified with a profusion of splendid elms 
and maples most thickly planted near the 
steepled church. Then out and along the lines 
of leading roads were solitary farmhouses and 
their belongings, the farms checked off into 
grass and corn and oat and potato patches. 
Clumps of trees stood apart, a sugar bush or 
wood lot or orchard; the roads winding with 
new interest along easiest ways, crossing each 
other and running on and out to adjoining vil- 
lages. 

Various sounds came up to me as floating 
music bringing the clustering memories of other 



258 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

days. Here a boy was calling to his cows, and 
the sharp barking of his dog answered to the 
call, blending with the musical tinkle of the cow 
bell; the bleating of the sheep calling their 
strayed lambs for the night's repose. An or- 
gan grinder, pied-piper like, was collecting the 
children in the street. The church bell rang 
out its vesper call to prayer. Then there was 
that indefinable undercurrent of noise, not loud 
nor continuous, but indicating the subdued ac- 
tive life below. Close by was the dull, slow 
chirp of a half-asleep cricket; the leaves occa- 
sionally rustled as though they resented in this 
quiet the teasing of the gentle breezes. So still 
and peaceful and beautiful. What a luxury to 
be alone and high up alone, and take in such 
far away visions of a glowing landscape. 
There ! the sun just dipped behind the horizon 
amid a magnificent blaze of glory. Sunset, but 
oh, the afterglows! How chaste and charming 
and golden the color that streams up the west- 
ern heavens. Now began that exquisite sensing 
delight, the loneliness of nature, the creeping 
of shadows over the land and sky and filling the 
air and wrapping things as in a mantle, gauzy 
and gay at first, but more closely woven at last 
and black. It was growing dark and I alone 
on the great mountain. The stillness for a lit- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 259 

tie was oppressive, and then delicious. Lights 
gleamed in friendiness from the houses, the 
stars twinkled with increasing brilliance. I 
could hear my heart beats, I could hear the 
"music of the spheres," or thought I could. The 
third afterglow had utterly faded out. The 
lights in the houses were being turned up; one 
burned brightly from a chamber window. I 
knew it was set there for me by one whose heart 
and hand were ever full of kindest ministries — 
set there that I might be cheered, and so I was. 
Over my head and all about glowed the stars 
in familiar constellations. Old and dear 
friends, loved from earliest boyhood and 
known by name since college days through that 
dear old professor's kindness and telescope. 
How large they appeared, how close about me, 
looking at me and speaking to me! how they 
throbbed and blazed! Ah! what communion 
with Him who formed Orion and the Pleiades, 
and who gave the morning stars the power of 
song far back at creation's dawn. 

The village clock struck ten — stillness and 
conscious joy growing intenser. I would rather 
be up here alone in the felt presence of "God 
and His Worlds" than in the gayest or wisest 
groupings down there. Those are not in their 
time and place to be despised, but this still 



260 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

hour alone with woods and rocks and stars and 
self is rare and elect and instinct with a higher 
good. There is a silence that is full and speaks, 
peopled with loving intelligences, and full of 
soul refreshment. There is a silence that is 
empty and suffocates, and starves. There is 
ever a society in the deepest solitude to the 
hungry-hearted. Not every one covets such op- 
portunities, but those who do, whether in the 
quiet of the chamber or cathedral or forest or 
mountain, they are sure to sense the choicest. 
In such hours how the voices and noises and 
strugglings of earth die out and drop away 
and He fills all space and all time and all life. 
Often the Master said to the twelve He was 
training, "Let us go apart from the multitude," 
and up into the mountain He led them. Up 
there He taught them and opened their under- 
standing and gave them visions of truth and 
life and came again into the plains girt with 
power to serve the race. Up in this awful soli- 
tude we feel the What and Why of Being, 
things look so small and shadowy, realities are 
beyond and above, relationships are everything. 
We turn instinctively from our troubled past 
and come into a better edition of ourselves and 
would build tabernacles. 

The bell in the church tower struck eleven, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 261 

and we bethink ourselves and cannot stay 
longer in this place apart, and so lighting our 
hand lantern we find the beaten path and rap- 
idly descend. Blessed are the memories of 
those precious hours of mountain silence ! 



FROM OUR OBSERVATORY, 



CHAPTER XVII. 



FROM OUR OBSERVATORY. 

Our observatory at the apex of our quadri- 
lateral roof was not an afterthought; it was 
provided for as a vital part of our home life, 
a necessary adjunct for culture and pleasure. 
We are not astronomers nor astrologers, but 
we love the stars and planned this place so that 
high up over the trees we could see the night 
sky with its beautiful worlds from all points 
of the compass. What a bright and glittering 
page, full of loftiest wisdom and greatest pow- 
er, is ever unrolled before the eye of man ; and 
that he may read every part of this great page, 
his world turns him about by day and night 
and through the livelong year, and so creates 
an ever-moving panorama of beauty and order. 
I do not wonder at astrology. It originated 
with early Orientals, where the stars are large 
far beyond what we know. The days were hot 
but the nights were brilliant, and so they came 
to be star-gazers and star-lovers; thus arose 
Magianism, that system of astrology that has 
been so fascinating for thousands of years. 

2&S. 



266 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

They were familiar with the Zodiac and its 
signs; they located the planets, the constella- 
tions were known and named. Then naturally 
there came their real or supposed influence on 
human life and character and destiny. There 
are phases of it most bewitching still. 

Star study is full of intense interest to the 
amateur. When once we know a star or planet, 
or constellation, how eager for additional 
knowledge, how relishful the nightly observa- 
tion, what a race-course for the imagination. 
We know the constellations and can easily find 
them through the changing year, but the study 
reaches ever out and new discoveries are made, 
new knowledge gained, new thoughts come of 
it and new joys are born. The beauty, the 
mystery and the magic of the heavens grow 
upon us and pay the sixty and one hundred fold 
of interest. One can never be alone if famil- 
iarly acquainted with the stars. He may rise 
early in the summer morning and see his win- 
ter friends, in winter he may gladden his heart 
with his genial summer acquaintances. How 
sensitive and sympathetic the human spirit in 
studying these infinite problems of a vast uni- 
verse. By all such study, life means more and 
correlation with its forces and purposes are 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 267 

among its greatest privileges and highest obli- 
gations. 

All science is making marked advance, but 
astronomy is moving at the double-quick. Four 
hundred years ago Copernicus settled the great 
principles, and it has never had to beat a 
retreat; it is rewritten every decade, not for 
the purpose of correcting material errors, but 
to incorporate new discoveries that are being 
rapidly made. Once astronomy treated mostly 
of tides and seasons and planetary aspects, but 
these are purely primary matters now; once it 
considered stars as fixed points of light, now 
they are suns, carrying their retinue of blazing 
worlds, and it studies their age and color and 
relation and movement; once it thought space 
empty, now it reckons it quivering with force 
and filled with great suns in motion. Between 
all suns the vast infinite spaces of ether are 
more wave-tossed than the wildest storm-swept 
sea. The telescope is making startling revela- 
tions of worlds undreamed of, of awful depths 
and sublime heights and overwhelming systems. 
The spectroscope is analyzing all starlight and 
chemically telling its compositon in color and so 
revealing its chemistry and geology. Multi- 
plied methods are used to get at their weight 
and velocity and orbit and perturbations, and 



263 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

our knowledge of them is so abundant, and yet 
how little we know ! 

It is a luxury to take in hand the latest and 
best illustrated astronomical books and maps 
and study celestial revelations. Surely they 
pass the bounds of credulity, they challenge 
imagination's most daring flights, they astound 
and confuse reason. We stand aghast in the 
midst of facts and flights that are unthinkable; 
we use words and signs to represent the un- 
knowable. Given the concept of God, and 
creation, with all its complex possibilities, is a 
necessity, and man in the divine image and 
highly endowed, must live in this creation and 
use it for his good and growth. It is not pos- 
sible to think otherwise. The more we know 
of this vast creation the more surely is borne 
in upon us its great corrollary truth, viz., an 
intelligent mind guides it and an almighty arm 
holds it in place and swings it in space ! 

What a restful spot this observatory, how 
cooling and refreshing to overtaxed nerves, 
after the sun and its day of noise and confusion 
have passed away and peace broods in the gar- 
den. Our observatory is furnished with good 
sittings, and an adjustable frame for our port- 
able six-inch telescope. It is a treat to our 
friends, and many a joyous and late protracted 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 269 

visit have we had up there alone with each 
other and worlds. How quickly it sets one 
apart from dull and low and ugly things and 
thoughts. It kindles imagination at once, and 
what realms it opens for daring flights, reveling 
in its birthright privileges, and somewhow amid 
the awful sublimities of an outlying universe 
it feels at home. If the day has been taxing, 
conditions being favorable we seek in the later 
evening repose by communion with the stars, 
and it never fails. They are so friendly and 
sympathetic. They seek to know us and talk 
to us and seem happiest when we are interested 
in them. "Cold and unfeeling as the stars," 
an oft-quoted sentence, had never appealed to 
us. 

We speak in this chapter of the more famil- 
iar phases of practical astronomy because there 
is so little known by the average person con- 
cerning planets and stars and constellations, 
their names, where found, the wonderful nebu- 
las, how formed and what they teach, their 
great distances, motion and speed. The reader 
familiar with these things can easily skip it and 
pass it over to the inexperienced. 

Look yonder to the north, there is that old 
"dipper" — surely everybody knows the "Ursa 
Major" and its pointers that indicate the "pole 



270 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

star." How bright and commanding and pic- 
turesque! It is always in sight, fifty thousand 
years ago it was in the form of a brilliant cross, 
and what a spectacle it must have been, and 
fifty thousand years hence it will have assumed 
the form of a great steamer chair, somewhat 
after the figure of Cassiopeia ; so changeful are 
the everlasting heavens. The "Great Bear" is 
short one foreleg, but the map-makers are apt 
to supply it despite the absence of available 
stars. The handle of the dipper is the tail of 
the bear, long enough for that of a cow, 
stretched, presumably, when Jupiter lifted him 
to the sky. So of the Ursa Minor, his tail is of 
unusual length, a good illustration of the Dar- 
winian law of adaptation to environment, 
stretched in the long ages he has been swung 
about the pole. It is interesting to study these 
northern constellations, for they are the key 
to the heavens. Polaris has been the "pole 
star" for a thousand years, but is gradually 
yielding his place of honor. Later on, i. e., 
twelve thousand years hence, Vega, a first mag- 
nitude star in Lyra, will be the brilliant north 
star, and such will be her surroundings as 
"Queen of the North," that section of the heav- 
ens will blaze in wondrous beauty, a galaxy of 
unexcelled splendor. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 271 

Polaris is one of our nearest neighbors 
among the fixed stars and shines by the light 
that left it fifty years ago. A railway train 
speeding on at the rate of sixty miles an hour 
would require six hundred million years to 
reach it. Mizar, at the bend in the handle of 
the Great Dipper, forty times as large as our 
Sun, is one of the finest of double stars and 
may easily be detected by a good opera glass. 

Groombridge, known as star "1830/' called 
the "race horse of the skies," is at present in 
the constellation "Bootes" and is a star of the 
seventh magnitude and of course invisible to the 
naked eye. His speed is two hundred miles per 
second! He has therefore a daily jog of seven- 
teen millions of miles! Surely, some force of 
which at present we know nothing, is propelling 
this great Sun on at its unprecedented rate of 
speed. He seems a messenger of the gods pass- 
ing in hot haste through our vast system bear- 
ing some important message into the infinities 
beyond. He is the last star whose distance 
from us has been accurately measured, and it 
is 426 trillions of miles. Let us see how it looks 
written out: 426,000,000,000,000! Interest- 
ing and significant these ghostly figures ! 

Since we are dealing in figures and facts, that 
represent the unthinkable and unknowable, we 



272 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

may as well indulge a little more. In this same 
constellation "Bootes" who is the famous 
driver of the guardians of the Pole and certain- 
ly making good time, is "Arcturus the Magnifi- 
cent." With his attending worlds he must add 
to the splendor of this endless bear chase. Arc- 
turus is a star of the first magnitude, and is 
easily seen from April to October. He is dis- 
tant from us, according to late measurements, 
one thousand million million miles ! He is a 
million times larger than our Sun, having a 
diameter one hundred times greater! This vast 
sun is bowling along the face of the sky under 
the North Pole at the rate of more than a hun- 
dred miles per second. No wonder he is called 
"Arcturus the Magnificent," a giant, indeed, 
and needs one thousand two hundred years to 
complete a single revolution. Job spoke of 
Arcturus full 1700 years B. C. "Canst thou 
guide Arcturus with his planets?" Homer 
mentions him 900 B. C. Groombridge in nine 
thousand years may be in "Berenice's Hair!" 

Greek mythology enters into the history of 
the stars, and singularly enough clings to them. 
Attempts have often been made to christianize 
the heavens and to call the twelve signs of the 
Zodiac after the Apostles; Peter, was to take 
the place of the Ram, as was most fitting, and 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 273 

the others in order. But those old Greek names 
will abide, they are poetic and the conceptions 
for the most part are heroic and sentimental. 
Take the story of Andromeda, she was a 
daughter of Cepheus, king of the Ethiopians; 
her mother Cassiopeia, had boasted that her 
daughter excelled in beauty the Hereiads, of 
course they were incensed and prevailed on 
Poseidon to send a sea-monster to Ethiopia. 
The oracle demanded a sacrifice and Androm- 
eda was surrendered. Perseus, fresh from a 
daring enterprise, bearing aloft the head of 
Medusa, spied the beautiful Andromeda 
chained to a rock, and knight that he was, slew 
the monster and married the maid; and so that 
splendid group of constellations circling about 
the pole picture the whole scene, for here is 
Cepheus and Cassiopeia and Andromeda and 
Perseus and Cetus and Pegasus, and the story 
is forever immortal. It fits and to change it 
would be a misfit. 

The Milky Way, the beautiful river of starry 
light, which flows full across the sky, arching 
from northeast to southwest, is ever a marvel 
both to the astronomer and to the ordinary star 
student. Because it fairly circles the heavens 
it is reasoned that we are a part of it, and that 
our Sun and his world retinue are near its cen- 



274 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

tre. If we could stand where our earth is and 
have it removed, we would see this blazing cir- 
cle completely surrounding us. To the unaided 
eye, it appears simply as a bright band in the 
glorious galaxy, but the power of the telescope 
has resolved it into countless Suns. "Infinity's 
illumined fields where bloom the worlds like 
flowers about God's feet." 

It divides for a portion of its length into two 
roughly parallel streams and glows in places, 
as if illuminated by blazing cosmic fires. As- 
tronomers tell us there are over twenty millions 
of suns with their attendant planets concen- 
trated in this magnificent belt. Most of the 
stars are in it or near it, and the farther you 
get from it the greater the starless spaces. I 
think the finest bit of poetry concerning the 
Milky Way was written by Elizabeth Carter: 

"Throughout the galaxy's extended line 
Unnumbered worlds, in gay confusion shine; 
Where every star that gilds the gloom of night 

With the faint trembling of a distant light. 
Perhaps illumes some system of its own 

With the strong influence of a radiant sun. 



if 



We know more than a million stars that have 
been studied and named and catalogued and 
registered on charts, the telescope brings added 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 275 

hosts into vision and photography reveals mil- 
lions more fairly populating the vast spaces; 
and yet of all the stars tabulated only twenty- 
three have been actually measured because no 
angle can be found equal to the demand, even 
though observed from the opposite sides of the 
earth's orbit which is itself over two hundred 
million of miles in diameter. 

For instance, our nearest Sun neighbor, 
Alpha Centauri, is 275,000 times as far away 
from us as our Sun, that is, 25,000 billions of 
miles! The next nearest Sun, 61 Cygni, is 
49,000 billions of miles from this planet! 61 
Cygni is a double star and they two are forty- 
five times as far apart from each other as our 
Earth from the Sun and yet it takes a most 
powerful telescope to show any distance be- 
tween these companions; this tells the story of 
distances between celestial orbits. So far away 
is Sirius, the brightest star in our heavens, it 
takes 1,300 years to note any appreciable 
change. Castor and Pollux have stood side by 
side for 4,000 years and yet flying apart at the 
rate of sixty-eight miles per second, 1. e., five 
millions of miles daily — this motion for forty 
centuries and still they are twins ! 

Mira, the wonderful, is a va_ able star, it 
grows rapidly bright and becomes a second 



izy6 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

magnitude star for fifteen days, then fades out 
and is invisible for months. Algol, the slowly 
winking eye, the Demon of the old astrologists, 
has a short period of two days in which to make 
its change from brightest to faintest condition ; 
its action is weird and the causes of it is a mat- 
ter of speculation. 

In our winter heavens Orion and his attend- 
ing constellations are by far the brightest and 
grandest grouping. He is a giant fighting 
mighty Taurus. The combat is ever on and 
neither flinches nor is vanquished. Orion con- 
tains seven brilliant stars, two of them are of 
the first magnitude, Betelguise and Rigel. His 
belt is the "California of the sky" because of 
its marvellous nebula, nothing equals it in weird 
grandeur and whoever has caught sight of it 
through the telescope can never forget it. In 
5,000 years Orion, Taurus and Canis Major 
will be merged into one immense group and will 
be by all odds the grandest galaxy in the heav- 
ens and demanding a new name. A record of 
5,000 years seems long in human history, but 
it is only a short hour in celestial time when we 
consider our earth has stood already one hun- 
dred million years ! 

There is no subject of astronomy grander 
for vision or discussion than a Nebula. Nebulae 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 277 

are luminous patches in the heavens, billions of 
miles beyond the vast limits of our solar sys- 
tem. They appear to the telescopic eye as faint 
clouds of hazy light. By the aid of photogra- 
phy, they are known to be composed of hydro- 
gen and other gases strongly condensed and in 
processes of evolution. In these different 
stages of its development one can trace the pro- 
cess of all world building. For instance, in the 
constellation Canes Venatici, there is one that 
shows a central condensation; one in Aquarius 
and also in Lyra that show a ring; one in Pe- 
gasus is surrounded by rings of gaseous spirals; 
in Taurus one is crab-shaped, beautiful and 
singular; the one in Andromeda has a bright 
ball in the centre and is spindle-shaped, and in 
looking at it one way it resembles Saturn with 
its brilliant rings; the Nebula in Orion is the 
most wonderful of all; in form like a trapezium 
in a field of floating glowing gas, so vast that 
our entire solar system would be instantly lost 
in it. It is in the Sword handle, middle star 
and can be glimpsed by the unaided eye. But 
for the most part these nebulae lie outside the 
range of our starry worlds. Up in the Milky 
Way, packed with its billions of suns, they are 
very rare. They are seen in all conceivable 
forms, circular, oval, lenticular, conical, spiral, 



278 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

looped, in fact in every form that smoke or fire 
could assume. 

About 10,000 of these Nebulae have already 
been discovered and photographed and charted. 
In places they seem to be vast outreaching lines 
or arms of light connecting stars already 
formed like some great octopus with prehensile 
faculties of infinite reach feeding on worlds. 
Most of the Nebulae are too faint to give per- 
ceptible spectra. But enough is seen by the 
aid of powerful telescopes and especially by 
sensitive photographic plates, to reveal their 
immensity. They fairly dwarf everything else 
in the heavens into an almost insignificance. 
Infinity of space and infinity of worlds! Across 
the chasm of over forty centuries still rings the 
old poetic outburst of the venerable Job, "Lo ! 
these are but the outskirts of His way and how 
little a portion do we hear of Him? But the 
thunder of His power who can understand it?" 

We delight in the study of the stars. The 
passion oft possesses us to stay in our conserva- 
tory far into the night gazing into the brilliant 
heavens and talking with the worlds and let- 
ting imagination and faith and spirit have their 
splendid revel. "The undevout astronomer is 
mad," for the universe is God's name writ 
large ! 



THESE OCTOBER DAYS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THESE OCTOBER DAYS. 

"By all the lovely tokens 
October days are here, 
With Summer's best of wealth 
And Autumn's best of cheer* 9 

September ushered in all the signs of fall 
and now colors of the upper end of the spec- 
trum are scattered along the hillsides and down 
over the pastures and meadows. Everywhere 
the flaming sumach and the yellowing birches 
and crimsoning maples and challenging reds of 
the dogwood and the russet browns of all the 
fields are lavishly in evidence. For a little 
there is a halt in the progress of this autumnal 
glory, for October must reign in her splendor 
and in her own way adjust all nature to the 
coming change. Everywhere is the riot of 
purple and gold, lavender and lemon, and they 
fairly storm our pleasurable senses. These 
high colorings are October's assets, her wealth 
of beauty and glory. I never can feel the som- 
berness of October as some. To tell it is full 

281 



282 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

of cheer. The passing months have been 
freighted with growth and beauty and fruit, the 
season's ends have been accomplished, the flow- 
ers are plucked, the fruit is garnered, the 
leaves are shredded and all nature is placid and 
pleased because so much has been done and so 
well done. The beginnings of the vegetable 
world, in March and April, are enrapturing, 
the endings in October are most cheerful. In 
spring a bit of arbutus, a few hepaticas are 
prized for their sweetness and shyness, but in 
the autumn we gather arms full of golden rod 
and aster and dress chimney piece and side- 
board, making our rooms as gay as the fields. 

Beautiful October! How by mystic spells 
she comes halting between summer and winter ; 
some of her days are roughly ruled by nor'- 
westers and are full of storm and wintry hints 
and mayhap the very next day all the rich gen- 
iality of summer's wealth generously poured 
out over the wide landscape. October seems 
in love with winter and summer both ; she woos 
both ways ; backward and forward. Her back- 
ward is as genial as " summer evenings be" ; 
her frontward look invites the biting frosts and 
cheerless days with leaden skies. In all this 
she is only tempering nature and toughening 
the race for the winter's coming cold. Her 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 283 

hints are more than emphatic that the tide of 
the year is changing and the ebb of the hazy- 
days has already set in. 

O that someone could but catch and transfer 
to a canvas of words the abounding glory of a 
single October day ! That he could inweave its 
purpling mists, its transforming sunlight, its 
glints of color, its floral and woodsy aroma that 
fairly tints the atmosphere, its sweet mono- 
tones of soothing sounds, its rippled music of 
slow-paced waters, the sleepy z-z-zing of lo- 
custs, the throb of distant flails, the drowse of 
laden and belated bees — all this and more into 
a word-picture, and not all the concentrated 
genius of poets and painters could compare 
with it. No other month is so opulent in color, 
so rich in brilliant contrasts, so superb in rare 
mosaics fashioned from woodlands and moun- 
tains and meadows and streams and skies. 

October is the time of "harvest home," fields 
have ripened, orchards have yielded their gol- 
den fruit, leaves are shredded, trees reveal their 
graceful forms, the hazy atmosphere gauzily 
wraps the enchanting landscape, outdoor work 
is nearly done, and now are the days of serene 
repose. The hill and valleys are touched with 
a bloom as rare and exquisite as that which lies 
lush on the grape; the dusky olive buckwheat 



284 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

sheafs standing amid its own crimson stubble; 
the broad pastures with their russet shimmer 
of feathery grasses; the quiet flocks and herds 
feeding and fattening; the Bluejays noisy in 
their thievish feasts — how deliciously it all 
melts into the soft haze and forms an ideal pic- 
ture. Summer is still haunting us, not in actual 
presence, yet everywhere is the odor of her gar- 
ments and the fruitage of her genial and sunny 
days; some of it has gone into mountains and 
deeper hued the seamy rocks; some of it has 
gone into life and thought and passion, and 
lives on and shall forever. Nothing is lost for 
Nature is an economist, her wealth accumu- 
lates, she stores for future use and foretokens 
the roll of centuries. Seasons are ministers of 
a higher good and soul takes on color and 
power. Everything means something and 
works and wins. Creation is no accidental or 
haphazard affair. A painstaking Creator is at 
the head and centre, ordering and supervising 
His orders. 

Late last night I sat at my library window 
and looked out on the garden, and into the 
skies; the garden was changed, but the skies 
unchanged. The household was asleep. The 
mignonette sent up its rich fragrance, the pun- 
gent odor of faded leaves was distinct, now 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 285 

steals the exquisite scent of wild grapes mas- 
tering in richness all the aroma of these October 
days, the crickets gave forth occasional dron- 
ings, the whippoorwill in rapid passionate ap- 
peals tried in vain to arouse and cheer the night, 
the moonbeams flickered through the tree 
branches, so gently astir by soft breezes — and 
all seemed to say "Summer is gone and autumn 
is come" ; yes, but what of it, summer was rich 
and generous, October is genial and tonic, it 
all counts and life flows on and the passage of 
years leaves a rich sediment for larger growths 
of thoughts and purposes and aspirations. 

How the fallen leaves have opened up vistas 
little suspected during the foliaged summer. 
From every hill-top a new outlook is taken. 
New paths thrust themselves on your notice 
most temptingly, you enter one, it is a real cow- 
path and must lead somewhere. This onet 
wound around a hill and brought me up against 
an old rail-fence of the zig-zag-stake-and-rider 
sort, spotted with lichens, bleached and silvered 
with years of exposure, it marked the boundary 
clear and cold, it explained the path. The 
fragrance from left-over ripened fruit that 
hangs about a few old abandoned trees tempts 
to the testing and the taste excels the sniff. 
Listening one hears the patter of chestnuts on 



286 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the dry brown leaves as the shifting breeze 
empties them out of the frost-opened burrs. 
Skirting the wood's edge is a hazel thicket, and 
we fill our pockets amid the sharp scoldings of 
some squirrels. The melodious whistle of 
Bob White challenges the listening ear and 
quickens the hunter's step and pulse-beat; while 
from the more secluded thickets the ruffled 
grouse and partridge rise with a startled whurr 
at the crackling steps of the intruder. The 
charm of these October days grows on one as 
he wanders through copse and field, so much of 
fresh interest at every turn, though he has seen 
it all many times. October's mantle fits with 
an easy grace, and its color-patterns are highly 
oriental. What sunset skies commanding ad- 
miration and compelling the artist's despair. 

Along the rail and stone fences the Virginia 
Creeper flushes scarlet and arrests the eye, the 
Sumacs are dropping bits of leafy fire on the 
sobering grass, the woodpeckers are hammering 
for fat grubs and fare well; wild geese "cronk" 
it overhead in their orderly southern flight; 
northern spys are taking on their final touch of 
crimsoning; pippins are absorbing their last 
gold sunshine, baldwins are sober red and 
hardening for winter, nasturtiums covered on 
frosty nights because we would have their rich 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 287 

flowerings linger as long as possible, (our 
mothers pickled them but we make friends of 
them). "Only fools burn leaves, " we gather 
them in heaps, for they are the grass crop of 
humus, containing nitrogen and potash for next 
gardening. These warm and genial days, 
veritable Indian Summer, seems as if the year 
had thought better of it all and was turning it- 
self backward; nay, it is only extraly fibering 
for the long keen and biting frosts. 

The Golden-rod, as a flower, has the right of 
way in all North America. It is our "national 
flower." There is no flower so universal. It 
grows freely from Central America to the Arc- 
tic regions, from the seashores to the summits 
of the mountains. It begins blossoming the 
last of July — September and October are its 
favorite months. There are over one hun- 
dred varieties and ninety-five of them are in- 
digenous to our soil; about fifty are discover- 
able in our county. How they throng the road- 
sides and ornament the hillsides and cover the 
pastures. The new botanical books give this 
wonderful flower fine illustrations and descrip- 
tions. It greatly improves under cultivation 
and bears richer sprays and is an ornament 
to any garden. Many of them are plants of 
great delicacy and it is not altogether easy for 



288 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

an amateur to distinguish and classify them. 
The Golden rod was so named in England be- 
cause of a scepter-like form — had it been 
named in America it would have been called 
"golden plume." 

Asters and Everlastings and Sunflowers lend 
vivid coloring to the fields and add extra inter- 
est. Few new flowers are to be sought for in 
this month. Yet the few that offer are calen- 
dar events of the year. Late in September and 
October in quiet retreats there comes the most 
beautiful of all fall blossoms, the fringed gen- 
tian. The color is that of heaven's own blue 
and its delicate beauty is so elusive as to defy 
the most skilful brush of the artist. How ex- 
quisitely it colors the low meadows. Bryant 
has written of this flower: 

"Thou waitest late and contest alone 
When the woods are bare and birds are flown, 
And frost and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near its end; 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through Its fingers to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if the sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. y * 

Then there is that familiar flower, the 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 289 

"White Heath Aster," called often the white 
rosemary or farewell summer, abundant and 
gladly welcomed; the Jerusalem Artichoke, 
abounding in damp places, called also the wild 
sunflower, whose happy faces smile and nod 
at every passer-by. The Chrysanthemum fam- 
ily is immense, over four hundred distinct vari- 
eties and new hybrids swell the list yearly. The 
florists have hot-housed it and compelled huge 
and gorgeous forms. "The king of the crim- 
sons" is the finest of the dark red order. This 
golden flower is queen of October gardens. 
What a wealth of bloom, the like of which we 
never saw even in June. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes sings of this angel flower as though she 
were an angel-queen: 

"The fields are stripped, the groves are dumb. 
The frost flowers greet the icy moon, 
Then blooms the bright chrysanthemum.^ 

Our native American shrubs are among the 
finest in the world. A shrub is rated for just 
what it can do. It must be able to render a 
service, either because of its rich and varied 
foliage or flowers or fruit. Imagine them all 
taken away and only the forest trees left. What 
a loss to garden and landscape. What a loss 
to the birds which love best of all to hide in 



290 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the thickets of shrubbery, often choosing the 
densest spots for their nests; what a loss they 
would prove to many of our shy wild flowers 
that nestle in cool copses and our pretty climb- 
ers that love to weave their soft em- 
brace around low shrubs; then, too, how we 
would miss the splendid mass effect in corners 
and along fences, and the gayly-hued berries 
so remarkably attractive, always providing that 
they have not been too severely pruned. 

We miss the birds in these October days. 
Oh that May and June would last forever, be- 
cause of the birds and their songs, and their 
happy mating and nesting. Yet October is the 
sparrows' month, and they make of it a gala 
month indeed. They abound and rise in start- 
led flocks from every field at your approach and 
circle about in most gleeful chirpings but no 
songs. The chickadees linger, but not a "chic- 
a-dee-dee" comes from their songless throats. 
The seed fields are ripe and they are feasting 
and that is enough, and we must be content. 

Some of the sparrow family stay with us 
through the year. It is the largest bird family 
and numbers over six hundred species. Spar- 
rows are the evergreen among birds. Some 
of its members are our sweetest singers, less 
emotional than the thrushes, but having a hap- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 291 

pier ring, the very kind for every day. The 
swallows linger and skim the meadows and 
lowlands, fattening for their long flights to the 
Southland. The bronzed grackle and black- 
bird tarry and are shy and active. Some north- 
ern birds on their southern trip tarry with us 
for several days, feeding to repair the waste 
of long-sustained flights. The woodpecker is 
always found in orchards and along the edges 
of thickets among tangles of wild grape and 
in patches where grow the shrub berries and 
among dead trees in the track of forest fires. 
But how he does enjoy these October days for 
he has now the monopoly of just the trees he 
needs. The Crow family is very large, some 
two hundred species, only six inhabiting our 
section of the country. The Crow is common- 
est of his class, and his class carries the palm 
of intelligence among birds. Many tales are 
told of the human actions of the raven, rook, 
jackdaw, magpie, jay and crow. The Blue Jay 
is well known and very noisy. He is an extra 
conversationalist among his mates and a very 
shrewd mimicker of many birds, even to the de- 
ception of the birds themselves. 

I had longed to spend a night alone in the 
fields, to see its life and note its activity and 
hear its noises and feel its joys. I have had this 



292 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

experience several times in the past, both alone 
and with others. Now circumstances favoring, 
I was soon equipped for my "night watch." The 
night was perfect and the moon would not rise 
until after midnight. I passed through the 
garden and moved quietly to the edge of the 
forest and took my selected and prepared place, 
leaning up against a sturdy old oak. 

At first the stillness oppressed me, then it 
soothed. Only a gentle starlight revealing 
things in blurred outline. Ear and eye acute 
and nothing escaped. The woods are so silent 
and shadowy and dreamful. Things are asleep 
this night hour. The few prowling beasts and 
birds do not rouse the sleepers. Nature may 
sense it all but does not show it. The squirrels 
! are all asleep and at ease because of full lar- 
ders. The Owl is prowling on wings as softly 
as a thistle blossom floats, and darts for a 
mouse within a few feet of where I stand and 
carries it off squealing. A Night Hawk swirls 
about suspiciously and hastily retreats. The 
moon is just rising and diffuses a little extra 
light. A watching fox has caught sight of a 
rabbit out in the clover patch and there is a 
race for life. My! but it was lively. Jackie 
was too fleet and knew his field and disap- 
peared and Reynard lost a royal feast, and rest- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 295 

lessly walked back and forth and coming close 
to me, sniffed and fled as if shot. But the grow- 
ing moonlight coaxed out more prowlers for 
preys. The night is theirs and the struggle for 
existence is sharp. But they are wary and keen 
scented and eyed. They know where are the 
clover fields, the brook, the gardens, the chick- 
en coops and the rich finds, and are alert with 
enterprise. A skunk passed and I did not in- 
terfere with him. A Whippoorwill lit close by 
and sang out his weird song-notes over and 
over, and suddenly flew. A mouse came and 
stood on my foot and seemed in the act of 
mounting my leg but some animal from behind 
seized him and it was done so quickly I gave a 
start and this animal, a weasel, skipped with 
his booty and several others of whose presence 
I knew nothing, fled precipitately. Quiet was 
soon restored, and I had in the meantime scat- 
tered freely of bread crumbs and more mice 
and toads and crickets and a striped snake and 
two young rabbits and a bird or two fed at my 
table and never knew the giver. For suddenly 
back ran the fox and all fled and so did he and 
again all was quiet. It was a pleasurable watch 
of gentle wild life seeking its nightly feasts. 
My every sense tingled with more than a hun- 
ter's delight. Quietly I withdrew after three 



294 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

o'clock and left them in possession of the 
woods. But the experience lives and memory 
delights in it. 

One does not know trees well who is not able 
to distinguish them in winter as in summer. 
Every tree has some peculiar beauty which is 
seen to best advantage in winter. The fine 
spray of the beech is only seen after the leaves 
are shed, then the sturdiness of the oak is best 
realized, then also the birch are far more 
graceful and attractive. The bark of most trees 
appears to greater advantage during and after 
October, carying a singular richness of color 
that adds beauty. How growingly interesting 
this study of bark color, because so varied and 
intermingled, the very green stems of the sassa- 
fras, the delicate branches of the red maple, 
the white and yellow and brown and pink 
trunks of the various birches, the red dogwood, 
the changing and always attractive quince ja- 
ponica, and ever so many others carrying extra 
suggestions of Nature's natural love of beauty. 

What a pleasure to find bird nests in October, 
to see where and how built, nests we wanted 
to find in summer, but the parent bird was so 
schemy and deceptive, she misled us. That yel- 
low-throat's nest, how we hunted for it, now 
here it is near the apple orchard, and a daisy 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 295 

nest it is. She always dove into a certain apple 
tree and from it flitted to another and another, 
and so eluded and tantalized us. Many a laugh 
we had over it. Yet not a little provoked. But 
here it is and we forgive her for protecting her 
nest and birdlings. 

These October days, so beautiful and rich in 
visons and experience, how we enjoy them, 
would we could hold them here for a few more 
weeks. But the order of Nature moves on and 
we are content and shall make the passing days 
yield all they can of rest and refreshment and 
inspiration. 



SOUL WINDOWS. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SOUL WINDOWS. 

The windows of our houses are valuable not 
merely for light and air which they admit, but 
for the views they command. It often happens 
that the outlook from some well-planned win- 
dow is the choicest spot in the house. The loca- 
tion is admirable, but this particular window is 
the household gem, the pet place for rest and 
refreshment. A window which takes in some 
fine sweep of vision afield, or some splendid 
mountain view, or some outlook on the mighty 
restless sea, or opens at eventide wide vistas of 
the heavens ; such windows are fortunes and in- 
spirations indeed. Charming pictures and fasci- 
nating dreams are always possible sitting 
here. Surely earth's fever dies out of the blood 
in such hours of vision and meditation. Here 
the struggles of life seem so useless, its per- 
plexing issues so insignificant, its ambitions so 
puerile, its achievements so unsatisfactory. 
These conclusions come not alone because the 
eye looked out of the house window, but be- 
cause the soul looked out of its windows into 

299 



300 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

the great spiritual realm and sensed its personal 
bearings and destiny. These soul windows and 
visions are real. They help determine life's 
true perspective. 

At these windows have stood the great pro- 
phets of the race communing with Jehovah and 
uttering His thoughts. Here also the poets 
have tarried writing their fiery messages the 
world will not willingly let die. Out of these 
windows as from mountain peaks, heroic souls 
gazed until life's meanings have been burned 
into the living consciousness. Life rarely ac- 
complishes things of great moment that does 
not stand close up to its soul windows. Some- 
times the look is out into gathering storms that 
must be met, into forbidding darkness that 
must be penetrated; such visions carry 
convictions and demand sacrifice. Wendell 
Phillips planned the legal life of the olden 
type that would afford ease and compe- 
tence. He had the ability and the means 
and the relationships, but one day on the 
mount of vision with God he saw the corrup- 
tions of political life and the enslaved race 
and felt his wrongs, and suddenly his life plans 
changed and a new path opened out into the 
whirl of passion, and he fought for a score of 
years as a hero, and then came the conquest, 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 301 

and lo ! the heavens opened and a voice that the 
world heard proclaimed him a beloved son. So 
earnest souls who have redeemed life from 
its baseness and lifted it up from greed and in- 
spired men with higher ideals, well know their 
soul windows and the visions of things invisible. 
We do not know ourselves until we know what 
things we cannot do without. 

Of the rugged old Hebrew Prophet Daniel 
it is recorded that in his Babylonian captivity- 
he opened his windows daily toward Jerusalem 
and there communed with his God. The open 
window would assist his thoughts in recalling 
memories, stirring sympathies, rousing imagi- 
nation, pinioning hope and so deepening spirit- 
ual longings. Out of that open window toward 
the west was Palestine, the land of promise, 
there was Jerusalem, the city of the great king, 
made memorable by prophets and kings and 
national prowess. That daily devotional hour 
with all its sacred associations was most vital 
and all Babylon could not invade it. Through 
that open window went the strong tide of his 
heart-laden thonghts. Is it not equally true 
that every burdened soul must have its open 
windows and open toward its Jerusalem? I 
have read that it is a fundamental principle of 
art in painting interiors that there should be 



302 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

represented some outlook into the outdoor 
world of light and life, some window open or 
door ajar giving a sense of outdoor atmosphere 
and freedom. How marked the old Dutch 
interiors in this regard. 

What this world needs most to-day is not 
more commerce and larger navies and heavier 
guns, but more men and women with open soul 
windows outlooking on God and the possibili- 
ties of human life. This is the age of the spir- 
itual and God is coming closer to human souls 
for self-revelation. Does not truth shine forth 
with increasing brilliance, are not the voices 
strangely commingling, is not knowledge in- 
creasing marvelously, is there not a growing 
heart-hunger for better living, are not old 
creeds breaking up, is not the Christ attracting 
men as never before? The age is evolutionary, 
and we must take higher vantage ground. You 
can tell from a man's walk whether he has a 
princely purpose, from his habits of thought 
whether he has the upward look. This is not a 
world of finalities but of beginnings. Growth 
is our heritage, before it horizons lift and zen- 
iths blaze in sunlit beauty. Achievements run 
on forever and solve in part the mysteries of 
early deaths and unfortunate lives; — God's 
plans are endless. 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 303 



'On Earth the broken arcs, 
In Heaven the perfect round! 



The purpose of this world is to grow souls. 
Impossible to think a higher object. The soul 
in present conditions is the farthest reach in the 
evolutionary process. Hence soul knowledge 
ranks highest. The old Delphic Oracle's su- 
premest wisdom was its motto, "Know thyself.'' 
It meant so much, it means so much. The 
world-long riddle is solved in soul growth, for 
this is victorious life. The great universe 
knocks at our door and proffers its infinite 
wealth, recognizing the High Priestly charac- 
ter of the soul over all Nature. Her forces 
of light, electricity, color, sound, and all ma- 
terial form have been here from the beginning 
awaiting human recognition and use. 

The Incarnation exampled the possiblities of 
being; so back of every invention and discovery 
and forward movement, is an elect soul con- 
scious of its powers and obligations. The great 
masters are leading men and commanding re- 
spect, because their soul windows are opened 
out toward the Infinite. Nor priest, nor 
church can give laws for soul growth. He said, 
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Per- 
sonality is the pivot on which all important 



3 04 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

things hinge. What one means colors ideas and 
purposes and acts. The personal equation en- 
ters into all life problems. Thought and feel- 
ing must incarnate. Something of the instinct 
which sends the swallow out on her migrations, 
draws the hero to his tasks. Haydn said of the 
chorus of his "Creation," "It came not from me 
but from above." The great leading geniuses 
are interpreters of the soul's inner world. 
What a magic power music exerts over the soul, 
it seems to greet it as if an old acquaintance. Is 
the soul ages old, has it come into this world 
as an incarnation, or is the old Biblical idea the 
right interpretation, "God made man in His 
own image and likeness;" — then is man artist 
because God is artist, musician because God is 
a musician, philosophical because God is a phil- 
osopher. Consciously, we are related to the 
greatest and best and most gifted. The best 
poetry and painting and music and oratory and 
architecture of the ages appeals to us in such a 
way that we instinctively say, "I could have 
done that as well as he under his train-' 
ing." Every struggling son of genius is our 
brother, for there is nothing human foreign to 
us. Visions and dreams we have, those 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 305 

"Sweet strange mysteries , 

Of what beyond these things may lie, 

And yet remain unseen, unknown/ 9 

We are greater than we can think or know. 
The outlook on splendid landscapes and gor- 
geous sunsets and starry heavens stir sublimest 
emotions, but we cannot fully voice them. Man 
ever comes to his best through the religious. 
Does not the soul feel its life lived to visions 
and models it cannot explain? Life has its limi- 
tations, but they are constantly falling back be- 
fore enlarging experiences. The perfection of 
life is living at peace with the conscious soul. For 
is there not another self within ourselves with 
whom we carry on conversations? Are we not 
often at variance with this inner self and fool- 
ishly try to drown its voices and spurn its coun- 
sels? We may do it for a time, but later it 
rouses to the mastery. 

There are supreme moments in our existence 
when great purposes dominate and vital revela- 
tions are made and a new call is heard and new 
grace vouchsafed and new paths open and life 
takes on character and power. There are such 
real epochs in human lives. Have we not sensed 
it in the indescribable look of another, the sub- 
tle saturation of voice in sympathetic song, the 



306 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

enthralling power of the orator swept beyond 
himself, heroic self-sacrifice that seemed di- 
vine? The soul cannot laugh out its own joy- 
ous laughter until it has communed with God. 
We talk of lights and sounds and colors and 
fragrance and beautiful things; are not these 
after all but the soul's delight in action? 

We are living in better spiritual times. The 
whole subject of psychology is being more care- 
fully studied and better understood. Psychic 
principles are more intelligently practised. Souls 
know each other better because men and 
women know themselves better: There is a 
growing passion for life's best things. The 
spirit of charity is broadening. Racial lines 
disappear and humanity as God's offspring is 
more widely recognized. Is a great spiritual 
crisis at hand? Foremost thinkers express it. 
A universal restlessness prevails, expectation 
grows intense, knowledge runs to and fro in the 
earth. Souls seem to await a Prophet who 
shall authoritatively declare, "The Kingdom of 
God is at hand." Why wait? Did He not 
say, "The Kingdom of God is within you." 
This puts highest emphasis on soul life and 
solves many spiritual problems. We know 
so little of the soul, the body claims 
so much and alas! gets the greater por- 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 307 

tion of time and strength and thought. But 
there are times when the soul refuses to be 
longer treated as a secondary, then come revo- 
lutions and revelations and resolutions, and life 
takes on higher meanings. These new rela- 
tions do not make us dissatisfied with life, but 
they do make us dissatisfied with present 
methods of living and with present ideals. The 
better life is ahead of us, we are moving to- 
ward it, that we know, but we are not hasten- 
ing our steps nor losing interest in present day 
affairs. We grow kindlier toward our fellow, 
more tolerant of opinions and more generous in 
gifts. 

No man can work well unless he can speak as 
the Master did of the "joy that was set before 
him." Destined as we are for immortality, 
we find all that is not eternal too short, and all 
that is not infinite too small. There is no nar- 
rowing so deadly as the narrowing of one's 
spiritual horizon. No worse evil could befall 
one in his course on earth than to lose sight 
of the prize of his high calling. When one 
thinks his duty beneath him, then does he place 
himself above God, for God has been person- 
ally dealing with that same duty. He selected 
it for you and gave it to you. He knew what 



308 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

you most needed and you shirked it and lost 
your opportunity. 

Everywhere is the plea for a cleaner atmos- 
phere. We are beginning to realize its health 
value. We insist on the abatement of nuisances, 
that factories and engines shall burn their own 
smoke, that sewerage shall be disposed of ac- 
cording to best hygienic methods, that garbage 
shall be cared for with least exposure, that 
overcrowded portions of our cities shall be 
checked, that poor tenement houses shall be 
condemned, and so for scores of things that 
militate against health and happiness. So do 
we sense the need of a pure moral atmosphere. 
Our world is surrounded with a deep sea in 
which we live, it plays through our physical 
organism and carries mystic potencies. So is 
our thought-world surrounded by its ether not 
less pervasive and vital. We cannot altogether 
analyze it, nor tell its whole content, it surely 
consists of ideas and thought influences that 
have for ages been accumulating. Some of it 
is stored in books, some of it compacted in in- 
stitutions and much of it lives in human lives 
about us. Soul atmosphere is an indescribable 
reality. The air we breathe gets its richest vi 
tality from beyond its own sphere. It quivers 
with forces that stream through it from the 



THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 309 

farthest stars. It is lightened and warmed and 
vitalized from our sun and from suns innumer- 
able. Our sun keeps it from poisonous gases; 
in fact, turns them into plant foods, and into 
vitalizing oxygen for the breathing world. If 
the farthest stars send influences to our planet, 
who can say what influences permeate our 
spiritual atmosphere and work untold value in 
moral uplift. How greater than all the arts is 
the art of making a pure soul atmosphere. 

Is not real Christianity this atmosphere? 

Rare experiences belong to the soul just why 
and how they come and what they are, we may 
not know, yet inklings of it all we surely have. 
What memories and dreams there are that will 
never die out. What mountain summits gained 
and what outlooking visions of the unspeakable, 
what fascinating hopes lure on into infinite 
realms of beauty, what pictures of inspiration 
crowd the halls of imagery, what siren voices 
plead and invisible hands beckon it upward and 
homeward. Do not all these things give hints 
of relations sustained to other spirits and work 
done independent of body and of which the 
physical organization is too dull to note or 
record? Who can inventory soul accumulations? 
Who can reckon its assets? Who can discern 
its companionships? Who can comprehend its 



310 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 

mystic silences? Who can explain why some 
experiences are so surcharged with spiritual 
power, why some attract and satisfy, and others 
repel and disturb its serenity? Who can ac- 
count for De Quincy's strange experiences? 
Who can explain that weirdest of all Balzac's 
storied heroines, Seraphita? 

These imaginings lie far out in the realms 
of possibility. Soul has its accumulations, or 
where go all the books read, all the pictures 
seen, all the music heard, all the visions of 
beautiful scenery, all the raputrous flights of 
imagination and all the purest joys of home and 
friends and life? Surely not lost, but stored, 
for memory never loses its brightest and nob- 
lest. Through these soul windows the good 
angels come and go, and the soul grows richer 
and riper for its everlasting Heaven-Home. 



The End. 



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